Fair Vote
by Nick Chiseler
Summary: This novel isn't about Dresden. It's about an apprentice, George Saga, who in the process of disentangling himself from a star-crossed selkie ends up lost within the dark alleys of Miami politics. With a twist of demon.
1. Chapter 1

[I've posted the rest of the completed novel as a pdf via blogspot because of the story's size and use of specialized fonts. You can get to it via http: nickchiseler. blogspot. com. Sorry, I can't give you an actual hyperlink because FanFiction doesn't allow them.]

**Chapter One**

I only impersonate a cop if it's for a good cause.

A _really_ good cause. Such as if the tools of my trade _purely_ _by_ _mistake_ end up stewing inside the Miami-Dade County Police's evidence locker. Which is where they were, and where it seemed they were likely to stay for a good long time.

_It wasn't my fault._ I had kept my things in some other guy's warehouse near Grand Avenue, a guy who was always on the police's short list. The cops had never found illegal goods in his possession in the past, but that didn't stop them from raiding his place now and then on their latest hot tip. It had been a while since their last search and seizure, and I had gotten slack.

Now they had my stuff, and they weren't giving me any information about how I could get it back. And I needed my stuff.

You see, I use my equipment for magic.

That's because I'm a wizard.

Okay, I'm not really a wizard. _Technically_, I'm a wizard's apprentice. It's just that I don't have a master any more, and I plan on keeping it that way, too. So if I call myself a wizard, who's really going to call me out, anyway?

No, don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question.

* * *

><p>I sat on the gum-strewn sidewalk outside the back of the Miami-Dade County Police headquarters, my legs crossed and my back leaning on the knobbly outer wall of the five-story building.<p>

I wasn't alone. A hodgepodge of other people, mostly poor and glum, stood or sat in the shade from the morning sun, each for reasons of his own. None of us spoke to anyone else.

Even though it was only morning, the black asphalt of the huge open parking lot drank up the heat of the summer sun and vomited it back out at twice the strength it received it. Overhead, the chattering of a passing flock of parrots was drowned out by the screeching thunder of a 747 taking off from the nearby international airport.

I was sweating profusely, and I looked just like everyone else.

There were at least a hundred squad cars and another hundred private vehicles parked in the back lot, with a slow, steady stream coming and going with the change of shift.

I sat, watching them.

A cop walked by me, looking down at me, observing me in the offhand way that cops observe everyone by force of habit. I looked up at him blankly, letting him think whatever he wanted to think about me. He went by without a word.

I kept up my vigil for a couple of hours before I began to get worried that it wasn't going to work. The change of shift had come and gone, and what I was looking for hadn't happened. Most of the other stragglers behind the building had gone, replaced by others. It wouldn't be long before I'd be noticed by someone watching the building surveillance system.

Backup plans began to run through my brain when my quarry appeared at the back door of the station. It was a cop who had finished his shift for the night and who had changed into civilian clothes inside the building, his uniform draped over his right shoulder from a clothes hanger.

He headed into the lot towards his car while I sat against the wall, watching him carefully. He was physically taller than me, I estimated, but his build was not much heavier than mine. After waiting two hours, this would have to be close enough. I stood up, grabbed my black backpack, and followed him out into the lot, walking in a parallel parking lane, not really looking at him, not really _not_ looking at him, either. The art of following someone casually was a trick my father had taught me when I was little.

When he stopped at his car, I quickened my pace a little and walked a bit past him. Twenty yards beyond his car, I slowed down and turned between a pair of squad cars, stopping at a position where I could see him clearly, but where I could be as concealed as I could get in a parking lot. I gently lowered my backpack to the ground, still watching him.

He had opened the trunk of his car and carefully lay his uniform flat inside. He slammed the trunk shut, opened the driver's door, and got in.

I had to work fast, now.

I sat on the ground and pulled a Hot Wheels out of my pocket. The little model car was different from his car in a lot of ways—mine was red and the cop's was blue, and his basic Japanese sedan really didn't have the same shape at all as my model of an American stock car. It would have been much easier for me if my model had looked exactly like his, but it would have to do. I could still establish an affinity between the two, even if it would be a tenuous one.

"_Nyima_," I whispered at my model car, picturing his radiator in my mind. I repeated the word over and over as he started his car. In Tibetan, _nyima_ is the word for the sun. For me, as for my parents, it is the magical symbol for fire. My parents were born in Tibet. I was born here in the states, but I learned magic their way.

The little Hot Wheels suddenly became too hot to hold. I dropped it to the ground, and the asphalt began to smoke beneath it. I kept chanting as the cop engaged the transmission and let off the brake. Suddenly, there was a loud pop from under his hood. Greasy steam poured out from the front and sides of his hood. I was pretty sure I could hear him curse in Spanish from inside his car.

_Sorry, dude,_ I thought. _There's no permanent damage. Er, not intentionally_.

The engine coughed to a halt and the cop got out, this time with a lot more energy than when he got in. He angrily slammed the door shut, locked it, and went around to the front of the car. For a moment it looked like he was going to open the hood, but a thick cloud of steam was still billowing out the front, hissing ominously. He evidently thought better of it and stomped off back to the headquarters instead.

I waited until he was halfway back to the building, and then I picked up my backpack and headed over to the car. I looked inside the driver's window. The door locks were electronic, controlled by a rocker button on each door. There was no blinking light warning of an alarm.

I held my hand out, concentrating. "_Anil_," I muttered, Tibetan for "air". I pushed the air around the lock button, and pressed it down. A _click_ emanated from the doors. I opened the driver's door and popped the trunk.

Moments later, I had the cop uniform in my arms. I locked the car and slowly walked away, careful not to draw attention to myself from anyone who might see me from the entrance to the building. About ten cars down, I opened a police car, got in the back, and lay the uniform along the back seat. I pulled my backpack across my lap and opened up the big compartment, and Jeeves crawled out.

Jeeves is my helper. He's a homunculus. Or something like that. The thing is, I'm not a hundred percent sure what he is. He belonged to my mother before she died, and she never had the chance to tell me all about it—er, him. Uh, thing. He obeys my orders, up to a point, but also has a way of marching to his own drum. If you touch him, he feels like he's made of fired clay, sans enamel. He has the physical attributes of a human being, except that his face is unfinished—you can see a vague set of indentations where he should have eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but nothing detailed. When he stands up straight, he's about ten inches tall.

He may have been someone's mini-butler at one time or other—hence the name I gave him. He's a neat freak. He spends a lot of time cleaning up the inside of my boat. Since he's so small, he's extremely slow at putting away big things like my shirts, but he's also tireless. He'd probably clean faster if I weren't such a slob.

Jeeves makes his own clothes. It's another one of his quirks, since I never personally cared what he wore. All the same, he has his own wardrobe of different outfits for different occasions, and has an uncanny instinct for knowing what best to wear to suit my plans. I've never actually seen him dress, and I'm a little grateful. There are some things about him that I just haven't been all that curious about. Today he was dressed in a black commando outfit, which I think he made out of a vinyl seat cover. I didn't try too hard to find out who's car he got the material out of. Like I said, sometimes it pays to have a lack of curiosity. It couldn't have been my car—there's not enough intact material left on the seats for him to use.

But it's his clothes-making that gave me the idea behind this dubious scheme of mine—that, and a couple of other useful features he has.

Jeeves pulled a sewing kit out of the backpack and opened it up. He walked up and down the length of the cop uniform, and finally looked up at me critically. He put his hand to his chin for a few moments. And then he got to work taking in the uniform. He knew it didn't have to fit me exactly, and definitely not for very long.

But you can't rush things, when it's Jeeves. I got out of the car, which was broiling in the midmorning sun, closed the door, and found a tree to sit under.

* * *

><p>The trouble with my disguise was that I was missing so much that a real cop would have had.<p>

Like cop shoes.

Like a gun.

And that big utility belt it goes in.

Like a name I could pronounce. What possessed me to steal a uniform from a guy named "Namuncurá Ezechiele Quiñónez"? But then, who am I to talk? My name is Dorje Gyaltso Saga. I just tell people my name is George. Introductions go so much faster that way.

When you don't have a complete disguise, though, my father taught me that the key to pulling it off is attitude. I am here in a police station because I have a right to be here…of course I am here…where else would I be? Attitude.

My father had been an undercover Warden for the White Council—which is the recognized governing body for wizards worldwide, and has been for centuries. He was a Warden right up until the day he disappeared. He taught me a lot of things about infiltrating a group of bad guys. So, okay, Miami cops aren't really the bad guys. But I'm not the bad guy, either. I just want my stuff.

There was one silver lining about the uniform. The lapel pins—in very tiny letters—said, "Public Corruption Investigations Bureau." And that was like solid gold to me. Because "public officials" includes cops. Which means that one look at me, and most cops would look the other way, if I were lucky.

Holding my breath, I pushed my way through the back door and strode into the police station, my head held high. I was in. The curtain was up, the lights were on me, and nothing else mattered.

I walked through a wide hallway that branched in each direction and ended with a pair of elevators. To the right of the elevators was a directory. I pulled my own notebook and pen out of my pocket, wrote down a few select names, and got the floor and room numbers of certain offices. I snapped my book shut, stuffed it back into my shirt pocket, and was just in time for the next elevator.

On the fourth floor, I followed the hallway around in a long arc until I found the office that I was looking for: "Narcotics Bureau, Chief, Lt. Tino Huerta." The door was closed. I tried it, and it was locked. Today was Sunday. He probably wouldn't be in. It was the narcotics bureau who had ordered the raid on my warehouse-mate, he was sure of that. They were in control of the evidence in the locker for our case. Which meant they could also approve the evidence's release, if the investigation had not gone to a prosecutor yet.

To the side of the door was a second keyhole, made for an alarm key. Well, I figured this wouldn't be easy.

Another cop walked by, saw me try the door.

"Need someone?" he asked in Spanish.

"No, it can wait until tomorrow," I said, also in Spanish.

"Okay," he answered, he passed me and kept going.

I took a step back and looked down the hallway each direction. I looked at the ceiling, which was made of the usual removable tiles found in offices. The office to the right also looked closed. The sign next to it said, "Narcotics Bureau, Sgt. Baldwin Ceja." I tried the door. It was also locked, but it wasn't alarmed. Right above the office door was a fire alarm siren.

I stepped closer and looked around. There were people in the hallway, but no one was really looking at me. "_Anil_," I whispered. The door latch pushed in, and I slipped past the threshold and stepped inside, quietly closing the door behind me.

The office was a mess. Piles of papers mixed together with chewing gum wrappers and Styrofoam coffee cups that had never made it as far as the trash can. Some of the filing cabinets were partly open, with files stuffed into them halfway. I looked around for anything marked "forms," and finally hit the jackpot at the bottom of the cabinet furthest from the door. I opened it up, and there were a zillion different folders, each with its own kind of form tucked inside. Some were yellow with age. But after methodically walking my fingers through the tabs, I found what I needed: "Evidence Release."

Holding the blank form in one hand, I opened up the large compartment in my black backpack, letting Jeeves out. He brushed off his black outfit and looked around the cluttered office, shaking his head in what must have been despair. He pushed his way back into the backpack and rummaged around, finally pulling out a miniature backpack he had made for himself last year. It contained all the essentials needed by a commando homunculus: a large and small sewing needle, a fifty-five yard spool of unwaxed dental floss, a fishhook, an eyeglass screwdriver, a pencil stub, and a few squares of blank paper.

In the center of the room, facing the door, sat one of those big metal desks that were made in the nineteen-fifties. I walked around it and sat down, reading the evidence release form. The nice thing about detailed forms is that at least they tell you what they want. I started filling it in with the address of the warehouse and a description of what I wanted released.

Which was two things: my thunderbolt scepter and my bell, both of which I used in the rituals of making potions. If I had to, I could have made myself some new ones. But that would be time consuming, and—more to the point—expensive.

The only things I absolutely needed were Tino Huerta's badge number and signature. Anything else I could improvise.

And both of those things could be found in his office next door.

I looked at Jeeves. He looked down at the form.

Jeeves doesn't know how to write. But he can _copy_ like a medieval monk on espresso. And he has a photographic memory.

I pulled a ballpoint pen refill out of my pocket and handed it to him. I rolled up the form and tied it with a bit of Jeeves' dental floss.

"You know what to do," I said to him. He saluted. He always seemed to know. He put on his backpack, tied the form to his shoulder, and waited for me. I pushed back the ceiling tile at the side of the office adjoining Tino Huerta's, picked Jeeves up, and pushed him up into the ceiling gap.

And then I sat down to wait. Buddha's blessings upon Jeeves, but you can't rush him when he's got a job to do.

I waited.

I nibbled on my fingernail and tried to convince myself that my anxiety was needless. I didn't say baseless—just needless. When five minutes had gone by, I realized that I might be waiting for a long time. I had no way to communicate with Jeeves—or, at least he had no way to communicate with me. No alarms had gone off, there were no noises next door. There was just the beating of my own heart to listen to.

I pulled a travel-sized deck of cards out of my pocket and started up a game of solitaire to distract my mind.

That's when I heard the footsteps. And a pair of voices, a male and female. The footsteps stopped outside the office door. I distinctly heard the sound of a key ring jingling. _Crap_, I thought. Of all the offices in the building, I had to pick the one with the workaholic and his girlfriend.

I glanced up at the ceiling tile, which was still shoved out of place. There was no sign of Jeeves. Whoever was at the door, I would have to stall them. Or better yet, make them go away. And I had to do it without bringing the whole station down on me.

There was the sound of a key entering the lock.

I wouldn't have time for anything fancy.

I took a deep breath and pulled power from the floor, reaching down into the earth below for more. The power flowed out of me in an expanding bubble.

There is a side effect to magic that affects most wizards—it's that magical fields play havoc on electronics. In fact, strong magical fields are outright destructive. The smaller and more sensitive the electronics, the more vulnerable they are to magical damage. Geeky wizards call this effect _Spectral Static Discharge_, and all wizards emanate this kind of field. Which means that even at the best of times, most wizards are bad for electronics, and at the worst, an angry wizard can hex an expensive piece of equipment into slag.

Or, _almost_ all wizards. Because _some_ wizards have the opposite effect. When these wizards hex a piece of electronic gear, it turns _on_. It's an inherited quirk, and it's rare.

But it's my quirk. My tachyon polarity must be reversed, or something.

The old telephone on the desk rang. I ignored it—it was me calling, after all. Outside, a cell phone rang, playing a salsa. It rang again. It was a pretty cool salsa on the first ring. It was annoying on the second.

"¿Holá? ¿Holá?" I heard through the door. "It's still ringing," I heard the man say in Spanish.

"Take the battery out," the woman said.

"What the—it's still ringing! Goddam thing!"

"Are you sure that's the battery you took out? Let me look."

"Yes, it's the battery, you think I'm some kind of moron? It's the battery, and it's still ringing!"

"There must be a second battery."

"The hell with it—" I heard the man mutter. There was a clattering sound. A foot stomped. It stomped again. There was a crunching sound. Silence.

"I didn't like my phone plan, anyway," the man said angrily.

_Damn. That didn't take long, _I thought.

I pulled harder at the flow of magic, tried to think of something I could quickly redirect it to. I remembered the fire alarm above the door.

Taking a deep breath, I sank myself into the flow and pulled viciously. When I had as much as I could hold—and I admit, I'm not a strong wizard—I let fly at the alarm buzzer. And it did what buzzers do best. The sound was ear-piercing. I held it going for about thirty seconds before I ran out of juice. It went quiet. I didn't hear any voices outside.

I breathed. Nothing happened. No one opened the door. I was alone again.

The black four could go on the red five, I noticed.

Familiar footsteps came back down the hall. They stopped at the door. Those terrible keys jingled.

I didn't have anything more I could throw. I was tapped out. I pulled the cards off the table, put them back in my pocket, pushed my backpack under the desk at my feet, and awaited my fate with serenity.

The door opened. A very irritable sergeant stood in the doorframe. Little pieces of black plastic were strewn haphazardly on the floor behind him. And then he saw me, sitting in his chair, waiting patiently.

"Who the hell do you think you are? What are you stealing from my office?" He barked at me in Spanish. "Are you the asshole who stole my CDs? Well?" Like any trained cop, he knew how to wield words like a club, and I felt them buffeting me.

"If you want to know who I am, come closer," I spoke to him in English.

"What's this? Are you making threats to me, in my own office?" he switched to English, stepping inside and turning the lights on. He looked me over. He noticed the pins on my collar.

For a tenth of a second, he turned green. But a good cop is schooled to take control of a bad situation, and his training took him over. He stood his ground like a terrier guarding the world's last bag of dog food.

"Get out of my office!" he barked, waving his hand at me vigorously. "Get out!"

In the corner of my eye, I saw a thin line of dental floss drop down from the ceiling. I remained seated. "It's okay, you can come closer," I said soothingly. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Sergeant Ceja's face turned red. Veins began to show in his thick neck. He walked up to the edge of the desk, putting the dental floss behind his field of vision, and planted his large hands on the visitor's side of his own desk.

"How dare you sit like that in my own office! You think I care who you are? Do you know what my men and I do every day? We put our lives on the line, morning and night, and _this_ is the reward we get! This is the respect we have earned!"

Jeeves slid down the floss to the floor, the rolled up paper neatly tied to his left shoulder. As soon as his feet were firmly planted upon the tile floor, he gently wiggled the floss until the fishhook anchoring it at the ceiling came loose, falling silently into Jeeve's waiting hand. He peered at the sergeant uncertainly.

I stood up. Ceja lifted his head higher, looking straight at me. He was much taller than me, but then again I'm less than average height. Rolling the floss into a loop, Jeeves slipped between the sergeant's legs and crawled under the desk.

"Tell me, Sergeant," I began, "why do you think I might be interested in your office on a Sunday?" I radiated the calm that I didn't feel.

"I don't know. And I don't care! I just want you out! And I'm not kidding around!"

There was a gentle tug at my pants leg and a rustling sound where I had laid my backpack under the desk.

"I see," I mused, "If that's your wish, then I must go. I only stopped in to sharpen a pencil, anyway."

He blinked at me, nonplussed.

I picked up my backpack from the floor, smiled graciously, and sauntered past him and out the door.

It took a million years to get to the elevator, and nerves of steel to not look back to see if he was following me. I don't have nerves of steel.

* * *

><p>No one stood in line ahead of me as I stewed in front of the clerk's window at the Property and Evidence Bureau. But still I had to wait. The lone clerk stared at his computer monitor—which I could not see—and tapped at his keyboard every few seconds, supremely ignoring me. I coughed, I tried talking to him, I rapped my fingers rhythmically on the window shelf that separated the two of us. He was immune. I got him to say, "Just a moment," once, and felt like I had earned a victory.<p>

"Can I help you?" the clerk said, turning towards me. He radiated bureaucratic disinterest.

I pulled out the evidence release form triumphantly. Jeeves has really come through. Everything that I had left blank was now filled out—Huerta's badge number, his signature, even the case number was there. Only Buddha knows where Jeeves located all of the needed information in Huerta's office.

The clerk took the form indifferently and set it on the desk beside his keyboard, pushing a half-eaten sandwich out of the way. He typed in a few keystrokes and read the monitor. His brows furrowed.

"Are you sure about this form?" he asked me without looking up.

"Yes," I said, my confidence suddenly deflating.

"Huh. Was this signed today? It looks like it."

"Why?"

He made a bit of a face, reading through his computer records a second time. "Well," he frowned, "it's just that the narcotics bureau didn't find any contraband in the seizure. There were weird things, but nothing illegal. So, last night the bureau released the entire seizure, and this morning it was transported back to its point of origin. But your form dated today has them just releasing a couple of items. I wonder if we screwed something up."

I just stared at the clerk dumbly.

"Did you say," I asked slowly, "that you shipped everything back?"

"Uh-huh. Maybe I'd better call Lieutenant Huerta and straighten this out."

For a few moments, I just stared at him, fully feeling like the total idiot that I was.

"Um, no, that shouldn't be necessary. The truth is, Lieutenant Huerta gave this to me yesterday afternoon, and this was the first chance I had to run it over to you. He must have changed his mind and released the whole thing last night."

The clerk scratched his nose. "So, why is it dated today?"

"That's my fault," I stammered. "I dated it this morning and didn't think about it."

He seemed to actually look at me for the first time. "If you don't mind my asking," he leaned forward, "so what's a corruption cop doing running forms for a narcotics chief?"

I sighed as if in exasperation while I thought up an answer to that. "There was a citizen complaint about the case. But it turned out to be a misunderstanding. It's all settled, now. You can keep the form for your records, if you want," I added.

He handed it back to me. "Just take it back. It'll confuse the auditors." I didn't argue.

"Thanks," I answered. I could feel a headache coming on.

As I sheepishly slunk away, the desk clerk's telephone and beeper went off simultaneously. That was me. When humiliation gets the best of me, everybody gets fair warning.

* * *

><p>Out of prudence, I decided to leave the police station through a different door than the one I used coming in. I didn't want any one person in the station seeing me too often and notice that I was missing key equipment in my disguise.<p>

I took the main first floor hallway around towards the front, and immediately regretted my decision. The waiting area for visitors was overflowing with civilians who were waiting to see a cop, or to pick someone up who was being talked to. I hated to think what a weekday looked like in here. People spilled out from the main waiting area into the hallway. Some people were sitting on the floor, others pacing around. The air conditioner wasn't keeping up.

Visitors looked at me as I got closer, maybe wondering if I was the guy that they were going to talk to, maybe wondering if I was the guy who was going to say that a loved one was going to go to prison. It must suck to be a cop, I thought.

I weaved my way through the throng and into the main waiting room. It was long, and every seat was taken. I felt like I was on display. It was creepy, having so many eyes on me. I perform in community theater all the time. But this was different. No one was here for laughs. All I could do was to keep moving and not look too hard at anyone.

And then they were there, the automatic sliding glass doors, marking the precinct station's main entrance. The morning light shone brightly through them, adding to the stuffy warmth of the crowded waiting area. I pushed my way past a pair of tethered goats, who sniffed at me curiously. I was almost out.

That's when she stepped in front of me to block my path. The most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Dressed in a gray sweatshirt and ratty jeans. She was tightly clutching a bulky brown paper grocery bag in her hands.

I looked at her. I looked at the sliding glass doors not twenty feet away.

"Officer," she said in a Scottish Highland accent, "may I have some assistance?"

She had long auburn hair that ran in natural curls down past her shoulders. Her eyes were so brown they were almost black. The seemed larger than they really were, somehow, and I narrowly avoided direct eye contact. It was as if gravity kept drawing me towards them. It's sort of dangerous for a wizard to look directly into someone's eyes.

Her nose, cheeks, and lips were gentle and feminine. Her cheeks bore a natural blush. I couldn't be sure of her age. She _looked_ as young as me, and I'm only twenty-five, but some instinct told me that she wasn't. She wasn't even wearing a swab of makeup, I was sure of it.

The sliding glass doors called to me again. "Look," I replied, "I'm probably not the right person for you to talk to. Have you signed in at the information desk?"

She touched my shoulder with the tips of three fingers, and I literally felt a thrill course through my body.

"I did," she replied carefully, "But they shuttle me from one person to another. I cannot tell if they are truly helping me or not."

"I see. And what are you here about?" I took out my notepad and a ballpoint pen, hoping that she simply wanted to report a stolen car or some other simple crime that the gears of the station bureaucracy was already handling at its own glacial pace.

"It's my husband. He is missing, and I wish for help to find him."

_Well, crap. There just had to be a husband, didn't there?_ Funny that she wasn't wearing a wedding ring.

"I am just visiting this country, you see," she added. "I feel so helpless to do anything."

"Welcome to Miami, ma'am," I said cheerfully.

"Promise me you will help me find my husband, Officer," she said. Her eyes seemed larger than ever, like a little puppy's. I felt myself falling into them.

_Don't make any promises,_ I heard my mind screaming at me. _Head for the door._

"I promise," I heard myself say. I could feel something go _click_ in the back of my subconscious, like a door bolt being closed and locked.

She smiled sweetly.

"Thank you, sir," she said softly. "I am verrah grateful to you."

_She's fey. I've just made a promise to a fey. Buddha's 'nads._

She smiled again, radiating innocence.

"I'm telling you, lady, you made a mistake choosing me as your hero," I almost whined. _Damn, damn, damn_. "I may not be in a position to offer you much help. You would be a lot better off going through the official channels here at the station. I'm telling you this truthfully," I added, with scant hope of wriggling out of my promise.

"I follow my instincts. They are true and never fail me," she answered happily, her eyes shining.

"We'd better go, then. We're both out of our element, here."

As naturally as if we were best friends, she placed her left hand around my right arm and followed me, hitting me with that physical jolt of testosterone again. I was going to have to ask her to stop doing that to me. Eventually. As soon as we found her husband.

Feeling like an ass, I led her out into the daylight.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

"Didn't Ronald Reagan drive an automobile like this on his ranch?" she asked—her Highland accent noticeably mellowed—as she got out of the car and gingerly closed the door. She was evidently concerned that she might break something if she wasn't careful. I guess she couldn't have missed my car's unsettlingly high ratio of bondo to steel.

Still, I bridled a little, feeling defensive about my old not-so-white 1981 Jeep CJ-8 Scrambler. With front-mounted winch. "Who?" I muttered.

"Before your time," she tapped her smooth chin with her perfect finger. "And what building is this?"

"Coconut Grove Playhouse," I said. "It's been closed for a couple of years, but they let my troupe hang out here as long as we keep the place under repair. We sort of keep the vandals out." I didn't tell her that I had the place surrounded with invisible runes to gently dissuade the local kids from tagging the building.

"You're a professional actor?" she was suddenly intrigued.

"No," I shook my head as we walked from our improvised parking space in the back alley to the pink-colored theater's back door. "We're a community theater troupe. But we've been around for a long, long time. Long, by American standards, at least. My father introduced me to them when I was little, and I've been hanging out with them ever since. They're sort of like my second family, now."

"Family," she said. Her eyes seemed to go far away for a moment. "I keep forgetting," she murmured.

"Forget what?"

She just shook her head.

I got out my keys, unlocked several dead bolts, and yanked the door a few times to open it. The damp air had warped it long ago. The theater was only a short walk from the Biscayne Bay.

She looked at the door's threshold and into the darkness of the building uncertainly.

"My name is Ava. Ava Dyer," she suddenly said.

I held my hand out to her. "My friends call me George. George Saga."

We shook hands. I waited a little too long to let go, irritated with myself for my obvious weakness. She didn't seem to notice my agitation.

"Is that your real name?" She cocked her head to one side, as if she had heard my name wrong.

I smiled grimly. "Someone like you should know better than to ask me for my true name," I said.

"Someone like—is it that obvious to you?"

"No," I admitted. "I don't know exactly what you are, but you aren't human."

"Yes, I—" she blurted out angrily, but cut herself off just as quickly. "It's cruel of you to say that. It isn't fair."

I didn't answer. I didn't make her whatever she was. I turned away and went inside, switching on the hallway light. Still standing outside in the oppressive heat, she looked around, seeming to think about it, and quickly stepped in, closing the door behind her.

So she probably wasn't straight from Nevernever, I mused. Too many people thought of this place as home, I had the place protected with some basic runes, and I hadn't explicitly invited her inside. Someone from Nevernever would have been blocked at the door's threshold, or at the very least struggled to get through it. Except for someone very powerful. I frowned, looking at her critically. She _was_ powerful, underneath all those layers of—something. I could vaguely sense it. Maybe even she didn't know how powerful she was. Maybe she just didn't care. Or maybe she was a better actress than our whole troupe put together. It wasn't impossible.

"Hungry, Ava?" I asked.

She nodded vigorously, her eyes suddenly widening.

"There's a break room at the end of the hall," I pointed. "There's probably food in the fridge. Help yourself, we all chip in for the food bill. And, Ava—" I looked at her.

"Yes?"

"The food I offer you is a gift, freely given, freely taken. It has no bearing on our relationship, and should not be construed as contractual."

She looked confused. "I have no idea what that means," she said, uncertainly.

Definitely not from Nevernever, then. I smiled at her. "I'll be right there. I need to ditch these cop clothes."

I turned the other way and took a short staircase down underneath the stage, turning the lights on. The room under the stage was sort of the Florida equivalent of a basement. Every imaginable piece of junk was here. There was a complete carpentry workshop in one corner for set construction. There was ancient machinery for lifting things onto the stage. And there were racks and racks of costumes, some of them left over from the earliest shows ever played here. Nothing was ever thrown out. Waste not, want not.

I pulled my civilian clothes out of my backpack and put them on. They were pretty rank with sweat, but I'd have to go back to my boat to get a clean set, and I didn't feel like it. I hung the cop outfit among a whole rack of other cop costumes. Like I said, waste not, want not. The show keeps going, right?

I found Ava poking through the freezer when I entered the break room. The room smelled of fresh paint, courtesy of a few active members of our troupe. This was the room we hung out in the most when we weren't actually working on a play. Since our director was off on vacation in Vieques, that was pretty much full time for us, lately. Ava pulled a box of cheap frozen fish sticks out and stared at it critically.

"You freeze your fish? And bread it?"

"Uh-huh," I nodded encouragingly.

She pulled the clear plastic container out of the box. "And—vacuum-seal it?"

I nodded again.

"Unbelievable," she muttered. "Is this what you eat on Fridays?"

"I'm not Roman Catholic," I pointed out.

"Right," she said. "Right. What persuasion are you?"

"I'm still working that out," I shrugged. "My parents would say that I'm Buddhist. That's as close to an answer as I've ever gotten."

She settled for some imitation crab salad that Emma—one of the actresses in the troupe—had left in the fridge. She had already found a box of breakfast tea and had put on a kettle, which was starting to whistle. I sat down at the large, round kitchen table and slung my backpack in the chair nearest the corner. She joined me, sitting on the far side of the table.

As she stirred her tea, the zipper on the large compartment of my backpack started to pull back. I reached toward it to stop Jeeves, but it was too late. He had already climbed out of his hiding place in the backpack. I didn't know that the little dude could be so fast.

He scrambled onto the table and put his hands on his hips, facing Ava. Scoping her out, as far as I could tell.

That clinched it about Ava, even if I had any doubts about her before. Jeeves had standing orders not to let regular people see him in action. But he never paid any attention to that order when the visitor in the room was not strictly of this world. Maybe a fey wouldn't have been fooled if he played dead, anyway.

Ava smiled and cooed at him. Jeeves took at bow at her, which was completely out of character for him. He was my butler, not some squire at a faire.

"He never acts like that around anyone," I muttered.

"Don't be silly, he's such a cutie!" She walked her fingers along the table toward my homunculus. He reached out and began to dance a waltz with her hand, to some private music only the two of them could hear.

I couldn't believe that I could ever be jealous of the little clay dude. But he was actually horning in on _my_ unavailable—whatever she was.

"Jeeves!" I said loudly. "Cut that out!"

"He's so sweet," she said wistfully. "He's just lonely. Didn't you know?"

I didn't know, and I wasn't sure I wanted to. What was I supposed to do with a lonely homunculus? I guess I could have snuck him into the movies, or something. Sheesh.

Jeeves climbed down the table and up onto the kitchen counter top and started cleaning, even though the counter didn't look dirty to me. But then again I'm a regular guy. I've come to realize that regular guys don't see dirt unless it exceeds an inch in thickness.

"So, if you're not a professional actor, what is your profession?" she dropped a cube of sugar into her tea before sipping it.

I thought through a million lies to tell her, but ended up with the truth. She would find out, anyway. "I'm a wizard," I said.

"A wizard," she repeated.

"Considering your—uh, nature—I don't see why you'd be surprised. How else do you think I knew about you?"

"Forgive me," she said. "When I was growing up, I was taught that magic was—I don't know—sacrilegious."

I shook my head in disbelief. "But you _are_ magic. What does that say about yourself?"

"I have come to accept what I am. I didn't ask to be what I became, but it happened, and maybe it happened for a reason, I don't know. I don't judge others by what happened to me. I can't. I just—just can't." She suddenly looked away.

"You don't like what you are?"

She laughed. "I _love_ what I am. That's the torment of it. I always thought I would go to heaven. But maybe my life is a kind of heaven. It's a beautiful thing, the world that I have come to know."

"Wait—" I put my hand out. "Are you telling me—are you saying you _died_?"

Ava shifted in her chair. "I try not to talk about it. You would be amazed how men can be put off by something like that."

"Oh, no, I think a modern, sensitive guy would understand," I tried not to let my eyes shift.

"Really?" she brightened. "You think so?"

I had no idea if she was being serious or not. But I wasn't prepared to hurt her feelings. Especially when I wasn't sure what she was. "Sure," I said.

"After all, why _should_ a man be put off by something like that? I'm still completely fertile, you must realize."

"Bonus," I rasped.

She eyeballed me critically. "You truly are the planet's worst liar. You do comprehend that, don't you? But you mean well."

Huh, so that answered that question. "And does your husband know your full story, by chance?" I asked.

She smiled. "My husband is exactly like me, in many ways. Yes, it's safe to say he knows my story. You're getting ready to ask me the morbid curiosity question, aren't you?"

"Frankly, yes," I admitted. "Would you be angry if I asked?"

"No, I guess not. It's not often that I talk with a person about it. It's a simple tragedy. I—I drowned. It was just a stupid accident. I was fishing in the loch by my village, and I ignored the approaching storm. I died for the sake of a few more fish. I suppose that's what makes my fate so ironic."

"What fate?"

But she just shook her head.

"Tell me some more about yourself," she said instead.

I shrugged. "Not much to say, really."

"Let me guess," Ava leaned on her elbows and leveled her gaze at me. "Tell me how close to the mark I am. You're an orphan boy. All the children thought you were strange and no one liked you, but you found your secret calling as a wizard and now you are on your way to true power, glory, and riches." She took a long sip from her tea and looked at me with those black, black eyes. I think they might have literally twinkled.

"Well, to start," I answered, "I was a foster child, but not really an orphan. And even that was only for a couple of years, after my dad went missing. Even I think I'm strange, but I was well liked as a child. At least, I _guess_ I was. I became a wizard because it was the family trade, but I also think a hundred and ten volts of electricity is pretty cool and definitely more powerful than anything I'd ever create with magic."

"What happened to your father?"

"He was an undercover Warden. I guess he went out on a job and never came back. I never really knew, and the—" there wasn't much point in hiding the fact of the Council from a fey "—the White Council wouldn't tell me what happened to him."

She narrowed her eyes a little. "You mother didn't give this group hell?" she asked.

"She was already gone by then. Car crash. Kind of a lame way for a witch to die, but it just proves we're as mortal as anyone else."

Ava put her tea down. "So you really were an orphan."

"Only if he died," I answered stubbornly. "I was fifteen."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have brought it up."

"Your story beats mine, so we're even," I answered.

She picked up her empty tea cup and took it over to the sink to rinse out. "I like this building," she said, absently. "I like the feelings here. A lot of people had good times here. I can sense them, wafting through the air like the scent of pine. Families came here."

"Yeah," I agreed. "My dad played with the community theater for a long time, as long as I remember. It was sort of a mailman's vacation for him. He said acting in the theater honed his skills in the field. But I also think he just liked it. He was most relaxed when he was rehearsing with his friends."

"I like actors," she smiled at me from the sink. "I always did before, but I appreciate them even more, now." She leaned on the edge of the sink, looking out into the distance. "They take off their skins and put on new ones for people to appreciate and wonder at," she murmured, almost inaudibly. "They fill the lonely nights with words that arouse the senses and they mould emotions like clay. There is beauty in all those things, if they're done right."

And now I knew for sure what she was.

"Ava," I said.

She looked at me, but didn't move.

Slowly, carefully, I reached out my hand to her paper grocery bag. She looked at the bag, and at me, but she stayed still.

I pulled the bag closer, and gingerly opened the top. I reached inside and felt something that was kind of rubbery, but also furry on one side. It was strangely warm, as if it were alive in its own right.

Slowly, I pulled the contents of the bag out halfway. Ava might have stopped me, but she didn't. She stood stock still, as if time had paused for her.

I was looking at the front half of the perfect tawny skin of a seal. It even had whiskers.

Ava was a selkie. She was a seal who could take off her skin at will, and become a woman. Tradition said that selkies were sometimes born from the spirits of people who drowned. Tradition had a lot more to say about a selkie's power over the opposite sex. No wonder she had my testosterone running so hot.

"I'm sorry I made you help me," she whispered.

"Sorry enough to let me drop my promise?"

But she shook her head quietly, not looking at me. Well, I had to try.

"Then we need to talk about your husband," I said.

She nodded, biting her lip.

"First of all," I ticked off a finger, "what's a _selkie_ from Scotland doing in Miami?"

Ava laughed nervously. "No, I'm not ready to answer that one. No, it's too embarrassing. Ask me how I died, again."

"Ava—"

She put her hand to her mouth, fidgeting. "Okay, just—pull the whole skin out. I'll hide my face while you do it."

Slowly, so has not to risk harm to her skin, I pulled it out the rest of the way from the bag. Her whole seal skin lay splayed out on the kitchen table. Head, flippers, tail…tail. Attached to her skin's tail was a long, red plastic tag with a big black number printed on it. The kind of tag a marine biologist would attach to a specimen.

I tried not to laugh. Really, I tried as hard as I could. But I couldn't help it. I spluttered and giggled. And then I just let it out. Ava turned red and crossed her arms, not looking at me.

"You got captured! By zoologists!" I cried out. "How could you let that happen? You _had_ to have seen them with their boats and their nets. All you had to do was dive! Even if you were on shore, I just can't buy it happening to you!"

"It's not funny," Ava pouted.

"But it's impossible!"

"I couldn't help it," she bounced on her knees a little, but kept her arms crossed defensively. "I like people. I like being around them. I wanted to see them. My husband warned me away, but—I got closer. Too close, I guess."

"And then your husband—?"

"Charged in to save me. And he was captured, too. They flew us in a pair of padlocked crates to a place called the Seaquarium. We found out that it was in Miami. At least we were together. It would have been very lonely if we had been separated."

The light suddenly dawned on me. The Seaquarium had advertised its latest new seals last week. And then in the news a few nights ago, there was a local uproar because one of their new seals had been reported stolen, then the other a couple of days later. If only they knew.

I noticed Jeeves climb back up the chair and crawl into my backpack, pulling the zipper closed behind him. Visitors were coming soon.

"So, your husband's name is?" I carefully refolded her seal skin and pushed it back into the bag, folding the top closed and pushing the bag across the table back towards her.

"Elliot. Elliot Dyer. When we found out where we were, he went off in search of a way to get us back to Scotland. We weren't sure if we could swim the whole way. We were afraid that we would get lost, or not find enough fish to eat, or enough places to rest. He thought maybe he could find out how hard it would be to get passage on a ship or plane. So that meant money. And perhaps false identification."

"Do you have his skin?"

She shook her head. "He took it. There wasn't any good place to hide it. They are always cleaning and inspecting there."

"So it's possible someone might have found his skin and hid it."

Ava nodded quietly. "It's always the risk we take when we move among humankind."

The sound of the theater's back door popping open and banging shut reverberated through the back hallway and into the break room. I leaned back from the table and peered out the doorway into the gloom of the hall. Two figures came into the light.

Emma and Calvin. From the troupe. Emma gave me a brief smile when she saw me at the table. Calvin just looked at the fridge. Calvin's still in his late teens, and has certain priorities.

Then Emma's gaze swung over to Ava, and something weird happened. The moment that they looked at each other, the air between them suddenly tensed. For a second, I could have sworn that the light bulb in the ceiling had briefly dimmed. But that always happens in this old theater. They looked each other up and down within the span of a second, the way only women can, sizing each other up. I'd never seen Emma react that way with someone, though. Or maybe I'd just never paid attention.

"Is this one of your father's special friends?" Emma turned to me. _Oh_, I thought. Years ago, my father sometimes invited guests to the theater from Nevernever—fey creatures that he hung out with for work. For some reason, the denizens of Nevernever were forever intrigued and somehow baffled by the idea of acting. Maybe they lacked the gene for imagination on that side of the universe. Father had never said who they were, not even to me. But I knew what they were from my training and from my Uncle's stories, and I was little, and I had a mouth. It didn't take long for the others in the troupe to piece things together. But they never said anything about it outright. They just gave Father his space when he had a guest in tow. Many of those people who would have suspected the truth have moved on—retired, moved up to Broward County, or even further north. But Emma had hung out with the troupe as a kid, just like I did. She must have remembered, and kept it quiet all these years.

But how she knew so quickly about Ava beat the hell out of me. Maybe because Ava's appearance was simply too good to be true. Not that Emma had any problem with her looks that I could see; her wild and curly burnt sienna hair strikingly offset her powder blue eyes and fair, lightly freckled skin.

Calvin's reaction to Ava was a whole other thing. I knew that I was going to have to do something about him.

He seemed to light up as soon as he laid his young eyes on her. It was almost embarrassing, twice over—once for him, and once for me. Because now, I could see from the outside what a dope I must have acted like back at the police station.

Calvin forgot all about the fridge and cruised over to the kitchen table, sliding into the seat next to Ava's. "I'm nineteen," he gushed, "How old are you?" Calvin was never famous for his sensitive pickup-lines, but then again that didn't ever slow him down. If you picture a young surfer dude, that's how Calvin looks. He's got long, curly blond hair, ubiquitously suntanned complexion, wears sunglasses indoors, and he's smarter than he sounds. But that might not be saying much. Looks have always been his strong point.

Ava glanced at me, and her eyes did that twinkle thing again. "I'm a sexagenarian," she leaned towards Calvin conspiratorially.

"Woww," Calvin stammered. "I am so into that."

"She's not a sexagenarian, Calvin," Emma raised her eyes upwards.

Actually, I thought maybe she could be. But I wasn't going to stick my foot in my mouth, either.

Studiously ignoring my guest, Emma pulled back the chair next to mine and sat down, facing me. "George, I was hoping to find you here. We have to talk. I've reviewed the books."

Emma was the troupe's treasurer. It was by far the most stressful job of anyone on the team. I winced involuntarily. Actors don't like to talk about money, unless there's an actual prospect of digging some up.

"We're down to our last twenty. The bank has started penalizing us for having a low balance," she said.

"So we put on a show," I said. She just stared at me, in only the way that Emma does. "I mean, we _charge_ for it this time," I added for clarity.

"In any month that we charge for a show in this theater, we have to pay actual rent for that month. That's why we can _never_ charge for what we do as long as we're here, unless it's strictly for charity. We would never be able to pull in enough money to pay even a month of actual rent."

I bit my lip. "We hold a fund raiser. We expand our membership, or something. I don't know."

"I'd call an emergency meeting of the troupe, but everyone's out on vacation. The three of us are it until the end of the month. Maybe we _could_ try the membership tack." She sat back and stared hard at Ava. "Perhaps your guest would like to be a member? A paid member?"

I sighed. "Emma, Ava can't afford the dues. She can't afford _any_ dues."

"Oh, so you're a _professional_ actress," Emma slowly nodded. "I should have guessed."

I sighed again. This was going to be a long day. "Emma, I promise you that I'll work on it. We'll make it, we always do." But I wasn't so sure. This theater had closed for an excellent reason. It was just too expensive for the original owners to keep up. Who were we kidding, a company of weekend part-timers? We were probably going to have to look for a smaller, cheaper place to hang out and put on shows. We might have to consider moving out of the Grove altogether. It was unthinkable, but money made you do things you didn't want to do.

Speaking of income, I needed to get to the warehouse and make sure my stuff got back from the police station in one piece. It would take me a long time to get my equipment set back up properly. But it was my business, such as it was. And it occurred to me that there might be something else at the warehouse that I could use, something that would help me to find Elliot. After all, I had promised.

"Ava, do you mind waiting here for a few hours? I have some business to attend to." Ava nodded, but she also directed her gaze at Emma and Calvin, questioningly.

Emma didn't look especially pleased that I was taking off without my newest guest, but she didn't say anything either. I was grateful. I'd pay her back, somehow.

"Sweeet," Calvin murmured.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

I parked my Scrambler in front of the roll-down garage door outside the small warehouse where I rent a little space for my business. I never leave my car parked outside in this neighborhood. There are places in the world where life and property are meaningful and worth something to the living. This neighborhood wasn't one of those places.

About a block down from the warehouse, a police cruiser was permanently stationed, day and night, to discourage the local boys from a life of illicit gain. But the police never got out of the car.

Glancing around, I stepped out of the vehicle, unlocked the rolling door, and checked the state of the wards on the squat and dingy building. Graffiti covered the walls from top to bottom. My wards weren't designed to stop that—there is no point in stopping the inevitable. But what the wards did do was to create a sense of unease and fear among uninvited snoopers. I kept the wards just short of compulsion. Just because I was not on speaking terms with the White Council didn't mean that I wanted to break their most important laws. I was in enough trouble with them as it was.

I pulled my car into the building and noticed that Fernando's black Beemer was inside. The police had probably called him directly to arrange to return his goods.

Among his other pursuits, Fernando has the same basic business that I do, except that he is a successful businessman, whereas I am a hack.

We both create off-brand nutritional supplements for the local health-food stores—the back-rooms of said stores, actually, where the die-hard customers go to get the things that regular people get from the corner pharmacy.

Here's the difference between Fernando's products and mine: First, his is professionally packaged and labeled, while mine is labeled using a homemade rubber stamp. Second, his is ridiculously expensive, and mine isn't. And third, what I sell actually helps people, while his is nearly harmless to ingest.

What I sell are potions. What he sells is style.

Fernando doesn't know diddly about health food. But he does know people. He knows what they want, and how badly they want it. He knows when to be there to answer people's desires, and he knows exactly when to melt away and disappear.

I don't know how, but he is on a first-name basis with all of the shady players in Miami. _All_ of them. He has a way of insinuating himself onto any team and make himself useful before anyone wonders how he got on board. He's dealt with the lowest scum on up to the highest scum. And somehow, he's never gotten himself blown away.

I don't understand it. If I did what he does—or, what I suspect he does on the side—I'd be dead ten times over. I've never actually seen him do anything blatantly illegal. And he's never come out and confessed anything. But he has to. He knows everything that everyone does. He can't schmooze with all those bad guys and not be in on what they do.

So this is the guy that I rent floor space from.

Don't get me wrong.

I don't approve of snake oil salesmen. Or drug couriers, or whatever it is he does on the side. They are greedy bastards who prey on people's insecurities and addictions.

But here's the thing. Mother Theresa was out of cheap floor space when I needed it. Fernando wasn't.

And before you tell me that I'm endangering the public by selling magical concoctions, let me explain that I only put the low-grade potions up for sale. For one thing, the higher the potion grade, the more it needs to be customized for the individual who's going to drink it. Plus, the low grade potions—simple cures, energizers, and memory aids—are much, much cheaper to make than something like a love potion. And okay, you have me—I don't want to endanger the public. I swear, people will put anything down their gullet if you tell them to.

Did I say I make my own gasoline potion for my car? I use liberated restaurant grease as my base, and a few other cheap and harmless ingredients. I figure I save three bucks a day. That's how cheap I am. The Grove can be an expensive place to live.

Growing up, I always had the impression that wizards were rich snobs, with the world at their beck and call. That my father only worked as he did because he liked his job. I was such a sap. Maybe I still am. I never claimed that I understood life.

Fernando held his hand out to me, walking over to me. "Jorge, let me apologize to you about this—" he waved his hand around the large room at the jumbled piles of equipment, some of it mine, some his. "The nerves of these people. My lawyers had to put in overtime. Let me know if those pigs damaged any of your things, and we'll bill them."

"You can't bill the cops," I said.

"Who says? The police? The judges? Of course they would say so. But that doesn't make it so. It's always good to make new friends, Jorge, and I try to make a new one every day. But sometimes a man has to fight for what is right."

I sighed, and smiled.

"Thanks, Fernando," I said. Sometimes you fight, and sometimes you make friendly with the people you trust the least.

"I'll be back first thing tomorrow morning," he waved his arm animatedly. "Let me know if you need anything, you understand? I like you as a tenant. I've never been robbed in this building since you've come here. I don't know why, but you're good luck to have around. Until tomorrow!" In moments, his beautiful car roared to life and pulled out of the building. A couple of local kids standing outside tried to peer inside to see what the warehouse held. I scowled at them unconvincingly. When they started walking towards me, I rolled the garage door shut, locked it, and reset the wards. "And some people you avoid altogether," I said. I hadn't missed the guns sticking out of their waistbands.

* * *

><p>An hour or so later, I had most of my gear set up in the proper sequence. The cops had done remarkably little damage to my equipment, probably because they couldn't figure out exactly what it all was. I had a lot of small cauldrons, hand painted with a variety of runes that would only make sense to me or another wizard. Thankfully, they hadn't found my mother's old grimoire on alchemy and potions. I keep that safely hidden. Well, just hidden. There's no such thing as a safe place to keep occult knowledge like I have just lying around. But the cops <em>had<em> emptied all my unfinished potions, so at the very least, I was going to have to start a few of them over.

Still, I wasn't going to do that, today. I had a promise to keep, instead.

* * *

><p>My parents don't define my life. They are not an emotional prison in which I live. They are gone, and my life is my own to screw up or make good as I will. Okay, I still have Uncle Senge, but he lives in a nursing home and doesn't exactly count.<p>

But my parents did leave me a few things that I use. One of those things is a little knowledge. And another of those things is a list of contacts—contacts to the flip side of the universe, in which magic moves out in the open, under the eyes of a sentient sun. Contacts to select denizens of Nevernever.

My father had given me the name of one of those creatures when I was very young. He taught me the art of _not_ invoking it. You heard me right. You would think that the magic of summoning would be one of the most important skills of a wizard, and in a way, it is. But once you reach a certain level, the art of not using your magic becomes just as important. That's because an ungoverned wizard is a danger to everyone. My father's lesson was a hard one for a small boy. If someone gives you a name, and challenges you to never ever utter it, how do you possibly resist that temptation? But I won the battle. I had obeyed my father, right up until the day that I realized that he wasn't coming back.

And that's when I had made my first phone call to Nevernever.

Using the ritual taught to me, I had invoked the name of Ytaiy and asked where my father was. I gave it the offerings that Father said it would require. But it wouldn't tell me. It said that Father knew I might ask, and had bought its silence. I said that I'd double the fee, and it laughed at that. Instead, it gave me a ring that belonged to Father. He had worn it the day he left for work.

That was the last time I had tried to summon it. Ten years ago.

I double-checked the wards on the perimeter of the warehouse. I lit a semi-circle of candles around an iron circle that I had bolted to the floor two years ago, when I first started renting here. I turned off the electric lights, letting the glow of the candles fill the room.

And finally, I lit a Bunsen burner and put on a small kettle of Tibetan tea. When the tea was ready, I poured it into an ornate porcelain teacup which was decorated with pictures of cranes in various forms.

You see, to answer a question, Ytaiy requires a small cup of human blood in exchange. I could have opened up a vein and given it what it literally wanted. But for some of the creatures of Nevernever, the symbolic representation of something can be just as potent as the thing itself. And I had been taught to think of tea as a symbol of our blood. So now I get an answer to a question in exchange for a small cup of tea. Neat, huh?

Father used to summon Ytaiy a lot for his work. They were practically friends, on the surface. Behind closed doors, Father told me more than once not to trust it.

I hunted around the warehouse for a box that I needed—there it was. Normally, it would be in the corner, hidden under a heap of other boxes. But because of the raid, today it was stacked on top of everything else, in full view. Must have been Karma.

Grunting, I pulled the box off the pile and set it down on the floor several feet from the iron circle. The box rattled noisily with the sound of clinking metal. I methodically began to pull out the contents—one hundred and eight phurbu daggers with an ornate human skull embedded in each hilt—and laid them out in an intricate spiral pattern, with the sharp triangular blades facing away from the center of the circle, leaving enough room in the spiral's middle for me to sit cross-legged. The ceremonial daggers were there to magically protect me in case whatever I summoned in the circle got loose. Unfortunately, if that happened, they wouldn't protect the rest of the neighborhood outside. I counted them as I laid them down. Because one hundred and seven daggers wouldn't protect me against squat.

And then I sat down in the center of the circle of daggers and cleared my mind.

Over the centuries, Oriental and Occidental wizards evolved different approaches to the magic of summoning. Western wizards developed a complex rune-based system that creates magical scaffolding used to locate, snare, and retrieve a named demon. It's a complicated system with a lot of moving parts. Eastern wizards have a simpler approach to summoning. We set up a circle in which to securely hold the demon, we reach through it mentally, and then we obsessively repeat the demon's name until it finally becomes fed up with the badgering and pokes its head out.

By and large the Eastern wizards are more successful at summoning—if you ignore the fact that our system is slower, and particularly ignore fact that we are also more likely to get the snot kicked out of us by an irritable demon.

The creature I was going to summon was small and fairly harmless. I would describe it as more of an imp than an actual demon. But the thing is, I never thought to ask where demons come from. Do they grow up from imps? How long would it take? I counted the daggers one last time. Just in case.

I breathed. I relaxed.

My mind probing past my consciousness into the unknown void, I chanted Ytaiy's name recurrently, calling to it, calling to it. In my left hand, I held my thunderbolt scepter, its double-point symbolic of the union of the spiritual and material worlds. In my right hand, I rhythmically rang my hand-molded brass bell, decorated with geometric repeating shapes and ornate symbols of the Buddhist faith. I called. I called.

Much sooner than I thought it would take, it came. I could have sworn it had known that I was going to invoke it, or something. Either that, or my skills had improved in the last ten years. It must have known.

"Little Dorje," the imp chittered in Tibetan from within the iron circle. "It is thee."

Ytaiy looked exactly the same as it had ten years ago. It was small, black-red, and scaly, and had the head of a reptilian-looking horse. Bat-like wings quivered upon its back. A continual wisp of white smoke seemed to form and reform around it, feeling its way along the circular barrier of the iron circle, probing.

"Ytaiy," I sang to it in Tibetan, "I bring thee a cup of blood as an offering. I crave thy indulgence of an answer to a question."

"And how hast thee progressed in thy search for thy father?"

I fell silent. There was no good answer to that question.

"It is well, little one," the imp wrung its hands, switching to a more modern dialect of Tibetan. "Your father would be pleased to know you obeyed his wishes in the end."

_It's taunting me_, I thought. _It wants to distract me from my purpose by making me ask a question that it does not have to answer_.

I reached out with my mind to the cup of tea. With a short incantation, I moved it through the air to the edge of the iron ring. It took careful control of several magical fields, but I pushed the cup through the barrier surrounding the imp without breaking the barrier. It took subtlety to do that, and I was pretty pleased with myself for getting it right.

Ytaiy took the tea into its hands and sniffed it. "I accept thy gift," it said.

"I crave the answer to this question," I sang, "Where may I find Elliot Dyer, a selkie of Scotland, husband to Ava Dyer, also a selkie of Scotland?"

The imp sniffed at the tea again.

"I may not tell thee _where_ to find him. His magic stops me. But I may tell thee _how_. Call upon thy company's agent, Iverna Cadena, and inquire about a group who call themselves Yargro Publicity Services. It is through them that ye shall find thy quarry."

It was as much information as I had hoped for. Ytaiy must have been in a good mood today. Either that, or it was preparing to seriously screw me over.

"I thank thee, Ytaiy, and wish thee safe journey." I released the creature back to Nevernever. The little imp shrugged noncommittally, and folded its wings about its body. It writhed for a moment and seemed to melt into the floor like hot wax. For a few long seconds, only the wisp of the smoke remained, daring me to lower the barrier.

I didn't.

And then the smoke, too, was gone. The room suddenly felt lighter. I had summoned an imp, and got myself an answer. It was a bit of a milestone for me. By my reckoning, I had reached the stage of my career where I knew enough to make things happen, but not enough knowledge to make the _right_ things happen. I picked up the daggers and put them away in the box. I wasn't going to let my awareness of my ignorance paralyze me. It wasn't like I ever let it stop me before.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

My car floundered and seesawed through city traffic. Cars, trucks, and bikes of all shapes and sizes dodged haphazardly around me as drivers forced their way into the lane they wanted, or vainly attempted to squeeze an extra half-mile an hour of speed out of their drive. There was a lot of honking, not a single turn signal blinking, palpable anger floating through the air, and this was just a Sunday afternoon, when most people had the day off and some were just coming home from church. When the Pope had admonished people to be nicer drivers, he clearly was thinking about Miami. The Pope lost that fight.

I had one more chore for the day. On Sundays, I visit my Uncle Senge in the Eventide Geriatric Care facility in South Miami. A nursing home, if you were wondering. Uncle Senge is about two thousand years old. Do I look like I'm kidding?

He's not really my uncle by blood. But he's been a close friend to the family for as long as I can remember. My mother got me started calling him "Uncle," and I have ever since. I don't know the whole story about how he got involved with my family. He knows, but he won't tell. Sometimes I secretly wonder if maybe he forgot. All I know is, he's been living in that facility for as long as I've been alive, and he'll probably still be in there long after I'm gone.

Didn't I tell you how old he was? You didn't believe me? Oh, I forgot to tell you. Uncle Senge is a vampire. He must be the oldest one there is. What can I tell you? My family picks up some weird friends.

On the way to South Miami, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Iverna, my agent. Okay, I don't actually need an agent, because I've never been a professional actor. But we met at a party, she gave me her card, and now I can tell people I have one. We run into each other from time to time at gatherings, so we still talk with each other.

"George!" she said. "How's my favorite charity case, you little bonehead?"

You know, I always thought that agents were supposed to be effusively polite to their clients, even if everyone understood that it was fake. Oh, wait, they only had to do that with _paying_ clients. That must be it.

"Hey, Iverna. How's your youngest?"

"Sleeps. Cries. Feeds. You know the drill. Thanks for asking."

"Look," I said, "I need to ask you about a group called Yargro Publicity Services. We heard through the grapevine that they may be looking for people like me."

There was silence on the other end of the line.

"Iverna?"

"Hey, kid, you know I love you, right? And I sure would like to see you finally make the money you deserve. But I know you personally pretty well, and I don't think that's really your territory, you know?"

"Why, what territory is it?"

There was silence again. "Wouldn't you rather I hooked you up with a nice porn studio?" she asked.

"It's worse than that?"

"Don't you know what that PR firm does, George? They do politics. _Miami_ politics. Understand?"

I reflexively gripped the phone. _Damn_, I thought. How could Elliot get mixed in with _that_ crowd? How'd he do it so _fast_?

"The thing is, Iverna, our troupe is out of money again. If we don't do something to raise some funds, we may have to move out of the Grove."

"So you're saying you want to hire out your whole troupe to these bastards?"

"No, most of us are out of town, so it's just three of us." _Sorry, Emma. And Calvin. I'll make it up to you, I swear._

"Three actors." I could feel her mental wheels spinning. "You realize this is a paid position, right? As in money. As in, the checks go to me, and I take my tithe before I pass it on to you, right?"

"Right."

"Okay, last chance to wimp out, kiddo. You want me to make the call?"

"Make the call," I swallowed.

"Call you back later. Keep your phone charged." She hung up.

I wondered if maybe I had just done a very stupid thing. But I was young, I thought. We're entitled. Anyway, what's the worst thing they could ask us to do? It's just a PR firm, right? Right.

* * *

><p>When I was little, Eventide Geriatric Care was just a one-story building with louvered windows and barrel-tile roof, and a leafy little courtyard where residents could sit in the morning sun. But since that time, the facility had grown with demand. Now it consisted of a sprawling set of buildings, none less than two stories, with noisy water chillers squatting upon their flat asphalt roofs. The courtyard was gone—there was no room for such luxuries, now.<p>

I checked in and made my familiar way through the winding hallways, the mix of anti-septic cleaners and old-people odor swirling around me.

Uncle Senge kept a small room on the interior, sans window. Actually, almost none of the residential rooms had windows, anyway; maybe they wasted electricity. Unlike some of the modern vampires (I've been told), Uncle Senge is truly vulnerable to sunlight. Well, actually almost all vampires are. But the modern vampires have developed tricks to evade destruction at daytime. Different vampire courts, different tricks. Years ago, our family had worried that some well-meaning nurse would wheel Uncle Senge out into the sun. Nowadays, I don't worry about that at all. The truth is, Uncle Senge has faded into the background; he is practically invisible to the staff. They do the things they need to take care of him, but don't really remember him when they've moved on. I wonder if Uncle Senge hadn't arranged things to work that way.

Because my uncle isn't an invalid, really. He's just checked out of life. I guess I would too, if I were older than Christ. At least, I'm told he's that old. It's not like I can prove it.

There was a crowd of paramedics hovering around the door of the room next to my uncle's. They were wheeling out a gurney with a body bag strapped to the top. It must have been a new resident, since the room was empty last Sunday.

The nurse was shaking her head, talking with one of the senior paramedics, who casually jotted down notes. "—very sudden, like I said. Her pain was obvious, but we couldn't give her more than—"

They didn't look at me as I went by.

I knocked on my uncle's door. He was sitting in his bed, propped up and watching the television. "Goddam demons, they think I can't hear them," he was babbling irritably to himself in a very old Tibetan dialect. His roommate was snoring. In all my years, I've never seen a roommate of his that was awake at the same time my uncle was. I think it was another of his arrangements.

Uncle Senge looked me up and down as I walked in.

"You smell like a damned selkie," he muttered in Tibetan.

I sighed. "Yeah, she's been hanging out with us."

"You throw it back. It'll just want to marry you. They're always lonely this and lonely that."

"She's a _her_, not an _it_. And who asked you, anyway?" I snapped back. I don't know why I was defending her. She had manipulated me. By all rights I should be mad as hell. But it was my screwup to be angry about. How did it become my uncle's business?

He harrumphed. "Don't be a mouse. You're going to grow up thinking it's fine to let creatures walk all over you. And then you're going to meet an elephant, and I'll be scraping you off the ground."

"I don't feel like fighting with you."

"Feel?" he said. "What's feel have to do with it? You think your father did what he did because he felt like it? Or your mother? Feh."

"I'm taking care of it," I said. "She'll be out of my life in a few days."

"Look at this," he said, pointing his clicker to the television. "A worthless toy car made not more than a hundred years ago sells for a thousand dollars, and an exquisite seventeenth century hand-crafted German armoire is worth a fifth that much. Bastards. I hate humans, they are such stupid creatures."

"Uncle? What happened to the lady next door?"

Uncle Senge went silent. He started flipping the channels, ignoring me.

"Uncle—"

"Are you afraid of me, is that what it is?" he asked.

I didn't know how to answer that. It was Uncle Senge that I was talking to.

"My demon is old, Kami. Old and tired. It no longer hungers, if that is what you fear. It sleeps, and never wakes. But I have not forgotten compassion. Not yet."

I narrowed my eyes. No, Uncle, no. Say you didn't.

He looked at me. "You are young, you don't understand these things. When the pain is unbearable, and life's future is spent, sometimes release can be a great mercy."

"You're right, Uncle," I answered, "I don't understand that."

Uncle Senge lay his head back into his pillows, resting his eyes. "Tell me about the war, Kami," he muttered.

"How should I know?" I retorted. "Goddam, it's not like I'm going to go out of my way to talk to the Council."

"I want you to go back to them," he said. "You walked their path once. They will walk with you again."

"We've had this argument before, Uncle."

He twisted his lips wryly. "You'll relent in the end, mortal urchin. When are you going to set aside your fears and join the Council in full, as your father and mother did before you? This purgatory of yours is a self-inflicted prison."

Uncle Senge has the perfect debate strategy. He doesn't exactly argue with me. He doesn't have to. He has time on his side, and we both know it. He just pokes at me repeatedly until I give in and do what he wants. He always wins those kinds of arguments. Eventually.

"Uncle, I don't think my life will be worth spit if they find out I'm still among the living."

"You are too afraid of them. You need to stand up and be a man, for once."

"I have reason to be afraid of them."

"Yes, that's true. I never said they were profound thinkers. But they have reason to be afraid of you, too. That's how negotiations are started, Kami. At a table, with equals at each side."

"I'm not their equal. That's ridiculous."

"Oh, you say so? Perhaps I have been too easy on you. We should have taught you harder, if those wizards are so good as you think."

"It's just that there's so many of them."

"And that is why you join them, Kami."

"That's a circular argument, Uncle."

"So? What other kind of argument is there? It was a good enough reason for your parents to join, after the Spiral was broken."

We looked at each other, but not directly. We had spoken our peace, I guess.

The old man leaned back and closed his eyes again. "Go take care of the selkie business," he said.

"Yes, Uncle," I answered. He always did that. He took what I was already going to do, and made a command out of it. That way, not matter what, he'd win the argument. Or maybe I just ended up doing what he would want, anyway. It was one of life's little mysteries.

* * *

><p>In my car on the way back to the theater, the cell phone rang. It was Iverna.<p>

"Yup?" I said.

"You're hired, all three of you. Union rates at double time. Show up tomorrow morning at nine. I'm texting you the address and particulars."

She hung up.

Showtime.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

I'm not going to try to analyze Miami for you. Because that's the point. _You can't._ Miami's unwritten motto is: "It's Okay, Don't Explain."

Those gaudy buildings peppering the greater city sure are impressive and bewildering, but where did they come from? Seek not to ask.

Why does an empty half-acre city park have a million dollar annual greenskeeping budget? There you go again. Leave it alone.

Why is a dirty bag filled with dried beans and twigs tied to that goat's neck? And why does the goat look so nervous? Don't butt in. So to speak.

The truth is, the Age of Reason never fully penetrated the county limits. If you ignore the veneer of bikinis and shirtless young men hanging out at South Beach, greater Miami's a world that might have been familiar to people two hundred years ago. The corruption, the exploitation, the lies. No wonder the fey are drawn here. It's like an old shoe to them, but with bikini girls thrown in.

So if you want to understand Miami politics, then you've missed the idea. There's nothing to understand. It just is what it is. And what it is, is _dirty_.

* * *

><p>The Yargro Publicity Services' headquarters occupied what used to be an old long-distance telephone switching office near the airport. Outwardly, the building looked old and bland. At nine in the morning on a Monday, the parking lot was nearly full of high-priced vehicles. We could see a nest of high-resolution security cameras bolted onto a tall pole every fifth car down each row, bristling like needles from an irritated porcupine.<p>

Since there were three of us, we took Emma's Corolla to work. My car could only carry two people; it had a cargo area instead of a back seat. Plus my car is essentially open-air, and we were all wearing suits, or the closest approximation that we could dig up from the theater's costume rack. We parked near the street in one of the last available spots.

Meanwhile, we had left Ava behind on my boat; I figured she'd be more at ease by the water, and hopefully less likely to get into mischief moored away from land.

Something about the building intrigued me. It had been built during the Red scare, and it looked about as solid as an old time pyramid. I guessed that it had three floors, but I couldn't be certain. Since the building had no windows whatsoever, I had no real frame of reference.

Emma gazed around the lot as she got out of the car. "I've never seen so many Yuca cars in one place," she shook her head. "George, I'm having my doubts about this adventure of yours."

"It'll be okay," I insisted.

"I just hope you understand that I'm taking vacation time to help you out on this. Not all of us have loads of unstructured time at our disposal." Emma worked as a paralegal for a real estate attorney.

"I know, I'm sorry you had to burn a day off. Or two. But look at it this way, it's all for the theater."

"Is it, really? Or are you doing it for that Ava chick? What was that piece of paper she gave you that you put in your pocket?"

I instinctively reached down to my suit pants. "I had Je—Ava drew up a picture of her husband. I'm helping her look for him."

"And you think he's here?" Emma pressed.

"Yeah, maybe."

"So, that's what this is all about? My vacation day is to help Ava and her wayward hubbie?"

"When you combine it with a hefty paycheck, it seemed like a good idea," I winced a little at Emma's logic.

"Paychecks are cool with me," Calvin tried unsuccessfully to straighten his jacket.

"See?" I said. "We have a majority vote."

"If I don't like what I see, I'm going to vote with my feet, George. Right?"

"Right," I nodded. "I'll make it up to you, Emma, okay?"

Emma just sighed to herself and started walking. I felt like a heel. Because she was right. I had dragged her into something that really wasn't her problem, just to make it easier for myself to get access to the Yargro firm. All because I had made a promise to Ava. The money was always just an excuse. Emma deserved better from me. I just never seemed to be able to deliver.

There was only one door that we could see from the parking lot, so we headed for it. To the right of the door had been posted a large and polished chrome sign bearing the name of the firm and its logo: a little black pig that seemed to be sniffing the ground for something. It must have been an inside joke, because I didn't get it.

Inside, the building was all luxury, and dry, cool air. As we stepped into the front waiting room, a college-aged girl wearing a tailored pantsuit and a garish button with the words "Francisco Echemendía Works For You!" popped up from a high-backed leather chair and offered us small glasses of cool mango and pineapple juice. Calvin helped himself to two.

"We're looking for HR," I told her.

"I'm just the juice," she said, almost with the sound of disappointment. "Talk to the front desk and they'll hook you up. You joining us?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Go Echemendía!" she pumped a fist up into the air.

_Holy scones_, I thought. I had just about jumped backwards into Emma.

"Yea, team," I muttered. Francisco Echemendía was running against the incumbent, Steven Hernandez, for Florida State Senator in District 35, but it really wasn't the senate seat that mattered to either of them. Both of these guys were up and comers, both had their sights set very high. And neither was prepared to be a loser to anybody. Each was probably as crooked as hell. It just goes with the territory.

Iverna was right. I needed to find my man Elliot and get the hell away from this place before it sucked us in.

A large, hardwood semi-circular desk wrapped itself around a pair of women who were dressed in black power suits and sported colorful picture badges. They looked at us with what might have been mild amusement. It annoyed me.

"HR," was all I said.

"We know, we ran your tag," one of the women leaned forward. I declined to look.

The other woman dumped a gray, square tray onto the edge of the desk. "We will need your cell phones and cameras, ladies and gentlemen. They'll be returned to you on your way out."

I just looked at her. "Okay, I get the cameras," I said, "but the cell phones?"

She pulled out from behind the desk three black camera-free cell phones with the firm's logo printed on them. "This building's a Faraday cage," she said. "You won't get a signal on your phone. It's a holdover feature from the cold war. We programmed these phones with your existing cell phone numbers. You can use them inside the building. Besides, most cell phones have cameras, and we can't be too careful."

Emma narrowed her eyes. "Did you say you had our cell phone numbers already?"

"Sure." The desk clerk pointed at the tray again. We looked at each other, and made the exchange.

"Do you, by chance," Emma asked, "record what we say on these private phones you gave us?"

A door to the left of us opened. "George Saga? Emma Felix? Calvin Holifield? Will you come this way? I'll process you in," a rotund middle-aged lady called out to us from the doorway. "Remember, until you get your badges, you must be escorted through the building at all times, understand? We want to avoid any little misunderstandings, okay? Follow me."

The desk clerk smiled at Emma. "Good luck with your new position, Miss Felix." She never did answer Emma's question.

HR Lady puffed and shuffled in front of us, but I didn't mind the slow pace. I was on the clock, now, and we had the time to take in the scenery. We passed through an expansive room with a desk farm. There were not even cubicle walls to give at least the illusion of privacy. Everything looked shiny, new, and overpriced. And it was piercingly cold, even with a jacket and tie.

People of all ages were sitting at their desks, talking animatedly on their telephones and entering data into computers. A pair of supervisors walked up and down the aisles between the desks, wearing a lightweight set of headphones. Seeing them took me back to high school, when the teacher would wander the room during a test. I couldn't tell what the people were saying on the phone—they were talking over each other. They all looked so intense.

In the distance to our right, a large doorway opened up into a break room. A gaggle of talkative women of all ages seemed to be clustered around someone I couldn't see. Maybe it was his majesty, Señor Echemendía, whipping up his troops. Or maybe some local celebrity. But then the group shifted apart, and I got my first real look at the center of the mob. I pulled out the scrap of paper with Elliot's portrait to be sure. It was him—it had to be. He was smiling and using his hands to describe something to the women that they found hilarious. I don't know why, but I felt a sudden unnatural jab of jealousy. He didn't deserve any of those women, I thought, knowing that the thought made no sense. Maybe Emma had felt the same kind of thing with Ava. No wonder they didn't hit it off. Maybe they just couldn't.

"Hold on a sec," I said. I started to cut across the room to him. The HR Lady grabbed a fistful of the back of my jacket and hauled me back in line.

"Stay with the group, please," she ordered in a lilting voice.

"I just saw a friend that I want to say hello to," I protested.

"You can socialize all you want after you've been badged, and at your proscribed break times," she cut me off.

Okay, I thought. Get my badge, get the guy, bug out. Can do.

The HR Lady led us past a long row of well-appointed offices and into a small conference room. She closed the door behind us. There was a large stack of forms on the table. Legal-sized.

"Now comes the fun part," she smiled. The scary thing is, I think she may have meant it.

First came the non-disclosure agreement. And then a form where we acknowledged that the firm would never ask us to break the law, and that we wouldn't break the law ourselves, but if we did, it was our idea and totally our fault. We authorized the firm to fingerprint us and run an FBI background investigation on us. We allowed them to run a credit check on us—on actors, of all people. These guys were nuttier than a Nixon family reunion. All for a temp job.

They really fingerprinted us, right there in the conference room. A photographer came in and took our pictures against the wall. A few moments later, an admin came in with our badges. The laminate was still warm and soft.

There was a knock at the door.

"We're ready, Mr. Wright!" the HR Lady called out.

_Mr. Wright?_ I thought.

The door opened, and three extraordinarily beautiful people walked in. "Isaac Wright" was the first to enter, according to the name on his badge. He was dressed in a perfectly tailored Italian suit. A white one. I'd never actually seen a guy wear a white suit before. It made me think of movies about old-time Havana, before the revolution. The comparison didn't seem very flattering. His hair was long and blond, and was tied in a pony tail at the base of his neck. His eyes were Caribbean blue. Emma seemed to stiffen and sit up a little straighter at the sight of him. Behind Mr. Wright came a man and a woman, also dressed in white. They were all straight from modeling school. I didn't know who the woman was, but I found myself staring hard and practically drooling at her. She was like a walking version of the statue of liberty, in multiple ways; not only did she look like her, but she had breasts of iron under that tight suit. I wanted to peel her some grapes and feed them to her. I wanted to unbutton her jacket. Her hips ground around seductively as she walked. No, she definitely had no business wearing white. Yet somehow I didn't care.

It was wrong. I sat back and forced myself to clear my mind. I pushed it all away, put the sensory overload somewhere else, as I had been taught to do.

When I thought they weren't looking at me, I risked opening my third eye.

People like me who continually manipulate the magical fields around us become attuned to them. Magic is like magnetism, it permeates everything, and is affected by all that it touches in one way or another. Opening your third eye lets you see the world from magic's point of view. It lets you see the wiring under the board. But here's the downside—once you look, what you see gets burned into your brain. You can't ever forget it, you can't shut it away. The first time my third eye opened was when I was seventeen, at public school. I saw my whole classroom spiritually. No pun intended, but it scared the holy bejesus out of me. I've learned since then to control it. You have to. No wizard can go around all day looking at the world that way. It's just too alien, too vertiginous for our corporeal brain cells. They simply wouldn't cope. So, I only take a peek when I feel that I really, really have to.

And now I regretted it.

Because under those magnificent masks of heart-stopping beauty lay the rancid bones of three vampires. White Court vampires, by the description my Uncle had taught me. White Court vampires don't feed off of blood; instead, they feed off of feelings of lust. But their style of feeding can kill you just as dead as a vampire from any other court.

Buddha's piss.

To my right, out of the corner of my third eye, I caught a glimpse of Emma and Calvin. They both glowed with a white-hot light, but it was a wrong, twisted light, like seeing a coronal mass ejection blowing out from their spiritual centers. Tendrils of blackness emanated from the male vampires toward Emma, slowly feeding off of her induced desire. Even the HR Lady was caught up in their influence, though she had a heart that looked like a void. Black tendrils crossed the room between the female vampiress and Calvin. Calvin was practically panting. He was all hers. And black tendrils reached into me from her, as well. I was actually feeding her, with my own life energy. Right from the comfort of my own chair.

If it were just me being shaken down for life force, it would be one thing. But they were screwing around with Emma and Calvin, who didn't know what was going on, who were defenseless.

It ticked me off.

And the vampiress sensed it.

I snapped off my third eye, but I didn't know if I was fast enough. All three of the vampires stared at me. Hard.

"Hi," I said sheepishly. "Are you the boss? Nice to meet you guys. So, uh, what's your sign?" I forced myself to hold my hand out to Mr. Wright.

The vampiress picked up a stapler from the conference table and sidearmed it at me. Before I could move, it beaned me. My head whipped backwards from the force of her throw. Or maybe my head was just doing its best to get out of the stapler's way. It _hurt_.

"Ow!" I cried out, and meant every octave of it. "What the—?"

Even the HR Lady looked surprised.

"Didn't I just fill out a form about hostile workplaces?" I whined pathetically. I could already feel a welt growing on my forehead.

"No shields," Mr. Wright said to the woman, as if he were discussing a bug. She nodded.

"Just checking," the vampiress said to me, coldly.

Checking, she meant, to see if I was a wizard, with amazing wizard protective powers and confounding wizard reflexes. But she clearly didn't know who she was dealing with. She wasn't messing with a mere wizard. She was up against a wizard's _apprentice_. And when you chuck a piece of steel at an apprentice, instead of encountering an interlocking magical shield that contemptuously brushes away meteorites, what you actually get is a string of foul language.

Don't get me wrong. I can make a _great_ shield. I just need a few minutes' warning, okay, guys?

"Run a second level profile on that one," Mr. Wright said to the HR Lady, pointing a perfectly manicured finger at me.

The HR Lady glared at me as if I had just tracked dog crap into the building. As if it was my fault that I got in the way of a flying stapler. "Yes, sir," she said to Mr. Wright.

"Go ahead and get them started on the project," the other male spoke up for the first time. "The Competitor is stepping up the timetable a little. It needs to be done by the end of the day."

"I understand," the HR Lady answered. "I'll let their handler know."

Without a second look at us, they left. I thought I had just survived a marathon. On Jupiter. Right before Shoemaker-Levy came calling.

* * *

><p>Our handler was a small, wiry guy sporting an equally wiry blondish beard. He wore a tan sports coat and light brown slacks, which were a little rumpled. He had the calculated look that said, "I'm too hip to be groomed." I wasn't sure what a <em>handler<em> was. Maybe he was some kind of casting director.

He eyeballed each of us critically. "Yeah," he just kept saying. "Yeah."

"Okay!" he clapped his hands once together. "My name is Nace Mikolčević. Everything you do today is on my nickel. If you have any questions or special needs, and I'm sure you won't, you ask _me_. Okay, gather up your things, we're going to a meeting. Everything that happens from this point forward is in the strictest confidence. Do you all agree to that?"

We nodded.

"I didn't hear you," he pressed us.

"Yes," we all murmured unconvincingly.

It must have been good enough for him. "Let's go, we can talk on the way." We shuffled out of the room behind him. The HR Lady gave us a parting smile that would have soured a pint of ice cream.

"Okay," he kept talking. "How much do you know about Francisco Echemendía?"

We shrugged.

"Good, good. And Steven Hernandez?"

We just looked at each other.

"That's good, that's what we want. We want objective people to do our work for us. Let me tell you about Echemendía. He's a rising star. He's a player. He's going to the top. Are you with me? And why is it that we believe this?"

"Because he brainwashed you?" I didn't say.

He looked back at us. "Because we're _paid_ to, by his most avid supporters," he said, looking completely serious. "We get our funding completely apart from his campaign. We're not bound by the election finance laws, at least not the way his official campaign office is. We're just helping out the concerned citizens of the community. That's the difference between us and his campaign office. His campaign office has a one hundred percent stake in the game. They're all in. If he loses, his campaign office loses. We, however," and he twirled his index finger around, "are his silent champion. We do all the things that have to be done to help him win fairly, to free him up to be the politician that he wants to be."

"Dirty tricks," Emma offered.

"No! The other guys do dirty tricks. We provide Echemendía with _protection_ against the other guys. And that's what you're doing today. Have you heard of swiftboating?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Swiftboating is when a shell group of people smears a candidate. But not just any kind of smear, they pull a smear that strikes at the very heart of his strongest credentials. Swiftboating involves more than just a lie, it's an outrageous lie, one so big that people have to think there must be some truth to it.

"That's what the other side is going to do. You see, the other guy, Hernandez, he's got a PR firm, too. A big, old, nasty one. Let me tell you about Hernandez. He thinks he's going to be President some day. He's already thinking national, even though he's just an incumbent State Senator right now. So he got himself a national PR firm, based in Chicago. They're called Pleiades Public Relations, and they're vicious. So it's our firm against their firm, the local boys against the national team. And let me tell you, I don't care what you think about Miami—whatever we do, they've been doing twice as long and three times as perniciously."

He opened up a door to a stairwell, heading upwards to the second floor. We tromped our way up the stairs.

"Whatever you do," he warned us, "never go to the third floor. Ever. I'll say that again. Ever. It's private. Even I've never been there, except once. Understand?"

We understood.

"Our job," he continued, "and your job, is to slow them down, trip them up. The technique we use is called reverse-swiftboating. It's when we feed the enemy a lie that they think they can turn into an attack. Only we're prepared for it with a vaccine…we have proof that it's a lie, and we make it public. Then we're inoculated. When they do their real attack later, it doesn't hurt as much, because the public knows to look for the strings being pulled."

"Why don't you just get your own team to post the lie?" I asked.

The handler looked at me, as if for the first time. "Oh, I'm going to like you, you're a thinker. Yes, we could do that, but it's not as effective. If Pleiades runs with the lie, we achieve two things." He ticked off his fingers. "First, if we're very lucky, we make the lie traceable back to them. Which discredits them, personally. Second, we make them doubt themselves. We want them to start second guessing themselves. It won't stop them, but it softens them up. _But_, if they don't bite, then the shell group is exactly what we're going to do. But we don't need you for that. We need you to convince Pleiades that they've found fuel for their fire."

He opened the door to a conference room.

Around a large center table sat a diverse concoction of people. Some sat leaning back in their chairs, their feet up on the table. Others were writing, or doodling. Some talked, and some listened. At the head of the table sat a middle-aged man, his needle-sharp eyes surveying his mad kingdom.

"Sit wherever you can," our handler said. He pulled out the nearest chair and plopped into it. "Reporting as ordered, Mr. Chairman," he saluted.

The boss added us to his survey and grunted. There were no friendly introductions. Everyone in the room seemed to know who we were. The three of us spread out and found empty chairs where we could.

"Push the baby out," Mr. Chairman slapped his hand on the table. "Push harder!"

"He, uh, wants to sterilize people," one of the people spoke through a pencil he was chewing.

"Sterilize who?" a woman asked him from across the table.

"Political enemies. The poor. Illegal immigrants."

"Okay, more. More, more, more!" the Chairman rolled his hand in a circle.

"He's an eco-terrorist. Has an eco-terrorist past."

"Okay, what about that?"

"He wants to save the sea turtles," one of the guys with his feet propped up offered.

"How?"

"He wants to force beachfront property owners to sell their land to the government. He wants to make the whole coastline a state park."

"Okay, keep the juices flowing," Mr. Chairman nodded. "Now, let's try to focus more on the past. We want things that he's already done. Where there's an evidence trail, okay?"

"Who's _he_?" I whispered to Nace.

He put a finger to his lips. "Echemendía," he whispered back. "Reverse-swiftboat, remember? We're brainstorming."

"Hurricane Katrina," someone in the group said.

"What did he do?" Mr. Chairman beckoned with his hand. Then he suddenly glanced up, at the back of the room where the door was. Everyone turned to look.

The room fell silent. Sort of like the silence that would fall over my elementary school cafeteria when the principal entered the room.

He wasn't tall, whoever he was. He wasn't especially young, either. He was bald. He wore a fancy suit and gold rings on his fingers. A Vacheron Constantin watch peeked out from his coat sleeve. And he was Tibetan.

_Wizard_, was my instinctive reaction. But I don't know why I thought that. Where was the pointy hat and robes? Where was the rune-covered staff? Okay, technically, he didn't need any of those things to be a wizard. I didn't. But most of the older wizards my dad brought round to the house had an anachronistic look to them that this guy just didn't have. Maybe I was just responding to the aura of power that flowed around and through him. _Priest_, my brain offered to me. But that made even less sense.

He smiled a friendly smile at no one in particular. "Don't mind me," he said. "I'll just sit in the corner and listen. I'd like to see who the dreamers are in the room."

Everyone seemed to straighten. Feet came off the table. Doodles slid to the floor.

"Who?" I risked another whisper to my handler, subtly pointing my finger in the old guy's direction.

He rolled his eyes. "The owner of the firm, stupid. Kalden Nawang."

"Okay," the Chairman resumed. "Katrina. Echemendía. What did he do?"

"Profiteering. Price gouging."

"I keep wondering about the Coast Guard," a woman said.

"What about them?" the Chairman turned.

"Well, he's on the advisory committee that reports to the White House, right? He can actually influence Coast Guard policy," the woman spoke directly to the Chairman.

"Yeah," the pencil chewer said, "but he's just a bit player."

"But he's _on_ the committee, through his position on the county commission. And you wanted to attack at his strongest point."

The chairman nodded. "Okay, ladies and gentlemen. Lucia has thrown down the gauntlet. Who will rise to her challenge? Coast Guard. Echemendía. Go!"

"The dead. The refugees who don't make it," one of the doodlers offered.

"What about them?"

"Well, what happens if the Coast Guard runs across a body of a dead Cuban? What do they do with it? Does anybody know?"

The room fell silent. I sure didn't know.

"I'll tell you what they do." he continued. "They don't bring their bodies back to America to be buried as heroes, ladies and gentlemen. No, they take them back to Cuba. And it's Echemendía's policy that made it happen!"

Everyone broke out into applause. I looked around, wondering what made his idea so popular with everybody.

"All right, all right. Okay, Simon, good. But I want you to take a look at the cast. Take a look at who they are, and think about how you're going to fold them in. Look at what you've got. You've got a Chinese guy—"

"Tibetan, actually," I interjected, suddenly regretting it. Nawang leaned forward to take a better look at me.

The Chairman waved a dismissive hand at me. "Who cares about Tibet? You're Red Chinese!" Nawang quietly arched a single stiff eyebrow. The Chairman must not have known, even though it was totally obvious to me. Nawang noticed me looking at him. A bit of a smile crept onto his face, as if we both now shared a secret.

"And you!" the Chairman was on a roll. "A simple Irish girl—"

"Welsh," Emma muttered.

"Come again?" But she shook her head meekly.

"—a simple Irish girl, and you're afraid, you're afraid of this Chinese guy, because you have his secret. And you! Beach Boy! Forget you, I don't know what to do with you." Calvin suddenly looked crestfallen.

"What's her secret, people? Anyone?"

"Slavery," someone said.

"What about it?"

"The refugees who don't make it," Lucia rubbed her hand back and forth along the table, like the twitchy tip of a cat's tail. "Do they all really die or get returned to Cuba? Or do some of the ships pick them up and _sell_ them as slaves?"

"And who runs the ships?" the Chairman pressed.

"The Chinese," everyone at the table intoned.

"And why isn't the Coast Guard stopping them?"

"Because Echemendía stopped them."

"And why did he do that?"

"He's being paid off. By _that_ man," and Lucia pointed at me.

Silence pervaded the room. Everyone stared at me. I sat up straighter. "You can intimidate me all you want, but you cannot break me," I said in my best Bruce Lee imitation. "We will prevail over the world, because we have the will of the People and the courage of our ancestors!" I couldn't help myself. I'm a part-time actor, remember? So shoot me.

The Chairman smiled.

"Run with it," he said.

Everyone looked over to Nawang to see his reaction. But he was gone. No one had heard him leave.

* * *

><p>By the time the reverse-swiftboat team wrapped up the loose ends of their plans, it was well into the late evening. Elliot had already left the building on a "mission." No one told me exactly what his mission was, but I pieced together that it involved a rich middle-aged woman and fundraising. Surprise, surprise. I guess he'd found his new calling. I hoped he didn't lose his skin along the way.<p>

I was going to find him and talk to him. Somehow.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

Pueblos beachfront bar was painted inside and out with a spasm of otherworldly colors. Every possible hue lived somewhere inside its walls. If there were any garish piece of artwork in the world, a copy of it could be found here. The only lighting was neon. The only volume was loud.

It was ten o'clock at night. Miami Beach. Monday night. The locals hadn't even had dinner yet. Somewhere, a party was rolling in, like a summer storm. I could feel it in the air, even inside the smoky control room upstairs, where I was watching it all.

Pueblos was owned by the FBI. I'm not sure who they used it against, but they sure had a lot of cameras and parabolic microphones in the building, all tied in with the control room. I had asked how we had ended up with access to the place, but all I got were shrugs. It was typical Miami—someone knows someone who owes someone a favor. I started to think that maybe it was time to start getting some people to owe me a favor or two, if this was the kind of outcome you could get. Maybe I could get someone to owe me a new boat.

Our handler sat in the back of the control room, chain smoking. At the front of the room, a team of people worked the cameras and audio. A bank of recording devices whirred tirelessly at the far end of the room.

Calvin sat on a couch next to me. He had been given a white puffy shirt that exposed his lightly oiled chest, and black baggy cotton trousers to wear. A nameplate with the bar's name and "BILL" was fixed over his right breast. As for me, I was decked out in some snappy-looking sports wear that involved a lot of small buckles, loops, zippers, and snaps. It was expensive-looking and I hated it. The guy I was playing was definitely meant to be a prick. Emma wasn't with us. She was the bait.

"George," the handler pointed at one of the screens. "That's our mark. The guy at the bar with the flat-top. He's a spy who works loosely for Pleiades, sort of as a free agent. His job is to dig up whatever he can on Echemendía. Lately he's been following around the ladies who work at the Commissioner's offices. Maybe he thinks they're a soft target. His real name is Jay Evans. We figured that this was as good a time as any to give the poor guy a helping hand. One thing to remember with him—he has some friends who sometimes hang out with him. Muscle. Here's their pictures."

"Team Alpha on twelve," the vision switcher announced. The large center screen flipped to a camera that had been pointed at the bar's main entrance.

A huddle of women in summer evening dresses wound their way inside through the mill of people. A maître d' guided them to a table we had reserved for them. It was near the middle of the long and narrow bar, but was made semi-private with a low wrap-around screen. Emma was among the group of ladies, all assigned to Echemendía's staff at the Commissioner's office. One of the women had just become engaged, and as a gift, Echemendía had paid for a girl's night out at Pueblos. He had introduced Emma to them as his assistant campaign treasurer.

The entire point of the exercise was to blend Emma into a group known to the spy. The women were not in on the act.

It seemed to me like the group had taken Emma under their wing. They sat at the table for three hours, parceling out and examining the minutia of life, reminiscing about their past, teasing the bride-to-be about the future. In spite of the serous game that we were playing, Emma truly looked happy. The senior lady took out a business card, wrote something on the back, and slid it over to Emma. She took the card with a soft smile. Nothing had really been said. But I think the lady had offered Emma a job.

Nace poked me in the shoulder when the party started to break up and, one by one, the women said their goodbyes and slid out of the table to find a cab home. "You're on deck, Comrade," he said.

I quickly rummaged through my backpack and pulled out a small stoppered bottle. It was one of my better potions, keyed to me, which I had fetched from my boat an hour before the party started. I don't have a name in English for it. The best translation is: "Dancing Tiger." The potion makes me agile, heightens my sense of balance. There's no tiger glands or testicles in it, don't worry. A good potion designer doesn't need that. Just a little clipping of tiger fur—courtesy of a friend who works at MetroZoo—does the trick.

It tasted terrible. Ear wax would have been more appetizing. But I didn't know if I was going to run into Evans' muscle, and I needed to be a convincing bad guy—without carrying any actual weapons. I ran my finger around the inside of the bottle and licked it to get the residuals.

I pulled out my checklist of things that I needed to carry with me, and double-checked my pockets. I had everything that I needed. I was ready.

The video switcher handed me an earpiece, which I inserted into my right ear. "Sound check," he said into a microphone. I gave him the thumb's up sign.

That's when Evans made his move to Emma's table. She was by herself, now, talking on the cell phone, looking worried, agitated. That's because she was pretending to be talking to me, Mr. Communista.

Evans slid into the seat across from her.

"Is everything okay?" he asked her, his voice coming in over the audio feed.

"It's—it's nothing. A guy wants to meet me, and I don't want to see him," she said.

The video switcher updated the audio feed to come in over my earpiece. He pointed at me and then at the door.

My cue. Raise curtain.

I tromped to the door and headed downstairs to the party.

"Hey, it's a free country, right? You don't have to see anybody, if you don't feel like it," the ice in Evan's Bermuda Highball clinked, like it was being twirled around. "Hi, my name's Daniel."

"Cadence."

"Hey, I like that name. Look, if some guy is stalking you, why don't we go someplace else, and you can just ditch him? It's no big deal."

"I can't," she said. "It's for work."

I could feel Evans looking at Emma questioningly.

"Sort of," she clarified. "Anyway, he said he was almost at the door."

I wound my way through the crowd. People were bumping into me from all directions, but my potion was starting to kick in. I barely noticed them.

"You want me to stick around? I'm not afraid of some jerk, I don't care if he's ten feet tall. See that scar on my knuckle? I knocked a tooth out with that!"

"Fight people a lot, do you?"

"Hey, I'm a lover, not a fighter!"

_Sweet Molasses, is that how I sound like when I hit on a woman?_ I thought.

Emma sighed. "Actually, he's shorter than I am. But really, it's not a good idea. He's sort of a Chinese commando. I don't want anyone to get hurt."

I was almost at their table. I could see them both, now.

"Chinese commando, my ass," Evans waved his drink in the air. "That dude is so lying to you."

"Please, just go," she pressed. "Thank you, but please."

My earpiece beeped twice. I pulled it out and dropped it into a planter. Three more steps took me to the end of their table. The dude and I looked each other over. He started laughing. I chose to start off ignoring him.

"What is this?" I said to Emma. "Are you trying to get cute with me?"

"Stop ordering me around! I'm not one of your _girls_!"

"Get him out of here," I jerked my thumb back over my shoulder. "Now."

"Hey!" Evans raised his voice over the noise of the crowd. "Why don't you make me, huh, yellah boy?"

Now it was my turn to laugh. Or, it was my persona's turn to laugh. Personally, I didn't feel like the situation was funny at all. I had no idea what kind of training this guy had, but I had the suspicion that it primarily involved either dark alleys or burning crosses.

I beckoned to him with my fingertips. "Show me what you got," I said coolly.

"No, Daniel! You don't understand!" Emma reached across the table toward him. When Evans turned to face me, Emma gave me a look that said, "I hope you know what you're doing." Sure, I knew what I was doing. I was doing something extremely stupid, that's what I was doing. So what's your point, anyway?

I backed away a few feet as Evans clomped his drink down on the table, threw his metal lighter beside it, and shuffled his rump along the bench. When he stood up, he overshadowed me by about a foot. Using Da Vinci's formula, that gave him about a four to five inch reach on me. He knew it, and I knew it. I'd have to come up with a way to capitalize on it.

I've never mastered any real martial arts forms. I've worked out with some Aikido. And I, uh, learned Tai Chi. My father tried to get me more involved, but I just never took to it. You have to grow up expecting to fight people to commit the time it takes to learn martial arts as a kid, and in many ways my youth had been pretty sheltered. Right up until the day I went into foster care. And by that time, I had some skills at magic to back me up, and no one to tell me not to use it.

Evans evidently decided to go for the big push. He held his hands straight out toward my chest and ran headlong at me. In the corner of my vision, I saw Emma's eyes go wide.

At the last moment, I rotated to one side, let his hands pass me, and rolled him over my shoulder in a judo flip, dumping him on the ceramic tile floor. A couple of drunk guys nearby cheered and clapped.

"Son of a—!" Evans hollered, seething at me with fiery eyes and flaring nostrils. He practically leapt up from the floor, swinging at me, overbalanced. He must have been actually drinking alcohol for the last three hours. Some spy, I thought. I kept backing up little by little, always just out of his reach. He went for a grab. I caught his right hand and quickly rotated it back to his right. He howled in pain and went to his knees.

"Go home," I growled. "Don't let me see you."

He pulled his hand away from me, but his eyes promised that he wasn't done with me. Well, that was the point, wasn't it? We wanted him to talk more with Emma. He just had to work for it. I was the hook. Emma was the tale.

"You have no idea," he said. "No idea." He got up and left without a single look backwards.

And now it was Act Two.

I slid into the seat that Evans had been warming for me moments before. Emma looked at me quizzically. She had never seen me get into a fight before. But she didn't know about the potion. I just hoped that she wouldn't expect me to protect her if we got mugged after this. Because honestly, I wouldn't wait for her to start running. Well, okay, for _her_ I might. But no one else.

I tried not to smile reassuringly at her. With luck, we were still being watched. She casually looked down at the lighter and nodded at it. She was letting me know that it was transmitting a signal. _Okay_, I thought. _Here goes_.

"Your boss is not doing all he could be doing to help our cause," I looked her nearly in the eye.

"Slavery is not a cause," she shot back.

"Who said that word? I never said that. What happens to them after we rescue them is none of my business, or yours."

"Is that what you call it, now? Rescuing?"

"You have not seen the condition of the boats and rafts that these unfortunate people use. I have, in person. We find many after they have drifted for days without water. They come to us with open arms. They give us thanks, before and after they sign the work agreements."

"And then you give them water."

I slapped my hand on the table. "This is the real world you are living in, Miss Lambert, not a sorority girl social club. Echemendía needs a secretary who understands the realities of the world."

"I'll let Francisco be the judge of that."

I signaled a waiter for a beer. "The Coast Guard is harassing our boats again. They almost boarded one of our boats yesterday. You need to ask Echemendía if he truly wishes to risk an incident with the Chinese government. Does he think he is the only person to benefit from our foreign investments? We propped him up. We could just as easily pull him back. You remind him of that. You tell him to put down his martini and go back to work."

She leaned her arms on the table. "You act like you really work for the Chinese government. But I am beginning to wonder if that would bear scrutiny, Mr. Yin."

In the blink of an eye, I was on top of the table. I held my arm out wide. I swung the flat of my hand against her cheek.

She didn't move away. She was supposed to pull away at the last moment, to make it look like a slap without it really being one. But she didn't. I connected. The sound of the slap hit me like a thunderbolt, wrenched at me. I almost dropped my character to apologize. Almost. _You were supposed to move away! I didn't want to really hit you!_ But she was being more of a professional than I was. She wanted the welt to look real for Evans. Goddammit. None of this was worth it, if it meant hurting her.

I slowly slid back into my seat. "I want to be very clear with you, so you must listen to me now," I said through gritted teeth. "You think you're the first person to think about going public? Don't deny it, I've seen it enough times to know. Just ask yourself why no one has. Just ask yourself what happened to those people who decided to betray us. Think hard."

I pulled two envelopes out of my shirt pocket.

"Here. One for your esteemed boss, and one for you. Because I know how much trouble you go through for us."

I dumped them on the table just as a fist as big as a soccer ball grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me out of the table and onto the open floor. I found myself face to face with a monstrous mockery of a normal human, a cross between _Homo erectus_ and _Mammut americanum_. He was really mad.

He proved it by slugging me in the face.

By pure instinct, my body wriggled out of his grasp. I don't even remember doing it. One moment I was thrashing about in his iron grip, the next I was perfectly balanced on top of the screen that wrapped around the table, my head still spinning. I somehow recall a backflip over Emma's table being involved; that would have been the potion doing the talking. I couldn't seem to be able to open my left eye.

Emma was midway through a piercing scream.

With my good eye, I looked around the room. The patrons had grown suddenly quiet. The throbbing music seemed strangely sharp without the white noise of the people.

Monster Dude was growling at me from the floor. He wiped his hands on his yellow guyabera. A few feet behind him stood another man, thin and stringy, who was much smaller but who somehow struck me as even more dangerous than the human mastodon. These were definitely the two guys in the pictures Nace had shown to me. The muscle.

And behind the two of them, there was Evans, frothing. I smiled at him, just goad him.

So here was my plan: Fight, lose, try not to get hurt. Some might observe that there are some obvious flaws in a plan like that. And I'd be the first to admit that they'd be right. As soon as I get my MBA, I'll get right to work on a fishbone diagram and get everything organized.

Until then, the armchair quarterbacks out there are just going to have to settle for Mister Improvisation.

With one hand, Monster Dude picked up a heavy steel bar stool and hurled it at me. I dove over the top of it from my perch on top of the shade, missing the ceiling by millimeters. As the chair flew by beneath me, I could swear that I heard the crack of a sonic boom. I dropped down in a dive, tucked into a roll, and grabbed the edge of Emma's table, tipping it hard to the floor. The far end of the table flipped up, launching drinks, condiments, and advertisements at my assailants.

"Movement twelve, High Horse!" I shouted as I bounced up in front of Monster Dude. He wound up his right arm to deck me, but my potion was now in full effect. I was operating at twice my normal speed, and Monster Dude was already slow to begin with. I rolled my left arm down for balance and shot up my right arm in a Germanesque salute straight into his Adam's apple. I had just attacked a guy twice my size with Tai Chi. And to piss him off even more, I was announcing it to the world.

Before he could deliver his counter punch, I shouted, "Single Whip!" I rolled my left arm forward and gave him a massive push. Uh, make that, I gave _myself_ a massive push backwards from his brick wall of a body, placing me just outside of the range of his arms. Okay, well, whatever works.

Magically, the crowd had cleared out an area for us to fight in. That was good. What was bad was that the crowd was as thick as Florida scrub at the edge of the circle. The only way to run would be to launch myself over the top of the mob.

The thin guy, Sir Slink, touched Monster Dude on the shoulder, but kept his needlelike eyes on me. He nodded his head to the left, and stepped to the right. They were going to try to flank me. Monster Dude picked up another bar stool and tested its balance in his hands. He grinned evilly. Sir Slink picked up a fresh martini from the bar and fished the toothpick-harpooned olive out of it. Casually, he slurped the olive off of the plastic toothpick, and then held it up as his weapon of choice for me to consider.

Wow. I thought that my Tai Chi thing was pretty cool, but damned if Slink hadn't just out-panached me. And he had me sold. Between the heavy steel bar stool and the plastic toothpick, I feared the toothpick more.

Monster Dude lifted the chair like a baseball bat and took a wide swing at me, aiming for my head. I executed Movement sixteen, which is basically a squat on the right leg, with the left leg splayed out, and the right hand held up at eye level to artistically resemble a bird's beak. The chair whizzed over my scalp, ending up smashing into an especially drunk onlooker, who doubled over.

I couldn't allow innocent bystanders to take collateral damage from a fight that for me was fake. I was going to have to end this, soon.

"Movement fourteen!" I declared loudly. I sprang back up to my left, using my splayed out leg as a lever, sliding rapidly towards Sir Slink. Movement fourteen is also called "Punching ears with both fists." I didn't know if it worked in real life, but it sure looks impressive on the practice floor. In extremely slow motion.

I lifted up my right knee and held my hands out in front of me for balance.

Sir Slink lunged at my right eye with the toothpick, which he had magically switched to his left hand. His motion was precise and snakelike, and almost blindingly fast, even for me. I almost whistled in professional appreciation.

I rolled my hands down my sides like I was doing the breast-stroke, and stamped down my foot to add strength to my arm motion. My head instinctively slid a few inches to the left to avoid his jab. He missed my eye, but managed to jab me in the ear. It's too bad my potion didn't stop me from feeling sharp pain. But his jab did bring his head in close to me. I completed my breast-stroke move, formed fists with my hands, and punched him hard in the ears. He winced. Even his facial expressions operated at heightened speed. He glared at me through his pain.

While I had the time, I finished with Movement fifteen, and kicked him in the stomach with my heel.

That was when Monster Dude launched bar stool number two at me.

With what balance I had left, I did a bicycle kick, backflipping myself over the inter-cocktail ballistic missile. I hand-standed through the flip, getting dangerously close to the edge of a heavy table. Maybe this was what I needed to get out of the fight. I followed through on the flip, but let it look like my foot slipped out from under me on the slick tile floor. My head went right for the edge of the table. At the last possible moment, I whipped my head forward to make it look like I had really connected with the table's edge, and let myself collapse to the floor in my best impression of a semi-conscious heap.

The fighting ended. The crowd cheered. The two of them casually walked up to me. Monster Dude kicked me in the stomach with his steel toed boot. It _hurt like hell_. And his foot stank. I groaned and rolled on the floor, but stay put where I was. The crowd cheered again, the drunk bastards.

"Stop!" Emma was yelling over the noise of the crowd. "You don't know what you're doing!" Man, she knew how to project her voice when she needed to. It was the theater training.

Evans smoothly pushed his way forward, his eyes gleaming with pleasure.

"Get him outside and search him," he said. "Then clear out before the cops come."

Monster Dude picked me up with one hand and threw me over his shoulder. I groaned, and meant it. Sick bastard.

Near the entrance, a waiter who was only slightly larger than me stepped forward to block the way. "What is this? What was going on back there?"

"Nothin'," Monster Dude said. "My friend got drunk. We're taking him outside so he don't mess up yer nice floor."

"Yeah," the waiter said, looking at me, and then up at Monster Dude. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

Monster Dude kept walking. People coming in stepped aside for us. Outside, the two of them silently looked around for a quiet corner to dump me in. They didn't have to go far. The lighting in this part of the street was spotty at best. I could hear the roar of the ocean waves nearby, and smell the salt air.

It only took them a few moments to search me. One of the things they pulled off of me was my passport—a Chinese one that the firm had quickly made for me. Another thing they found on me was a laminated Chinese Navy pass card. It was—duh—written in Chinese, but with all the symbols and official-looking things, it shouldn't have been hard for them to get the gist. They also found a Chinese-issued cell phone. I don't know where the firm got it, or when. Maybe they have a prop room that's even larger than the Playhouse's. Or maybe they had the world's most motivated supply chain.

"Kill him?" Monster asked the Slink.

"No," Slink said, looking back and forth between me and my identification. "Let's go."

* * *

><p>It was a long walk back up to the control room. I had to take an outside staircase from the alley behind Pueblos, which meant a walk around the block.<p>

There was no permanent damage to me, but I hurt all over. My left eye was wedged shut, my right ear was still bleeding a little, and my gut felt like it had been run through a meat tenderizer.

Nace whistled in appreciation when I stumbled in.

"I'd say the man gets some hazard pay," he held his finger to his lips, directing his gaze over to the monitors.

Emma and Evans were sitting at the table, which had been restored to its original place. The condiments and advertisements were neatly arranged at the back of the table. Evans had a fresh Bermuda Highball for himself. Emma was busy spinning her tale. In spite of my pain, I thought that she had the tougher job between us.

So we had come to Act Three.

"The sound is still spotty," the vision switcher said.

"—baby, it's not your fault. It's your boss that—"

"—took money from the bastard. Not just once—"

The vision switcher continued to work on the sound, but it kept cutting out. I wondered if I hadn't accidentally overloaded the equipment with magic a little during the fight.

Still, Emma was clearly in form. She was rolling out the story, and Evans was just all over it.

"—only way to make him stop is to go public with—"

"—oo dangerous," Emma shook her head. "You didn't kill him, did you?"

"No, baby, those guys are just my buds. They're not—"

"—don't. He's just one of—"

"—don't work for the press myself, okay, but I know some—"

"If only—"

"—can if you can show some solid evidence—"

"Evidence," Emma repeated, as if thinking to herself, deciding something.

"—can't just—" the speakers squealed with static, "—need hard—"

"—give to just anyone—"

Evans was practically crawling over the table now. "—talking national syndicate—" He was gesticulating wildly, his arms spread out wide.

Emma seemed to think about it.

"Hey, Beach Kid," the handler said to Calvin, who was snoring softly on the couch. He poked Calvin on the cheek with an umbrella.

"Yeah, okay," Calvin murmured. "What time is it?"

"You're on deck. Don't forget your gun."

"Okay," Calvin yawned and rubbed his eyes. "Did I wrinkle my shirt?" He looked like he had just stepped off the runway at Fashion Week instead of napping his way through work.

"It's too late to worry about that, kid. Emma needs you, so make it good."

"Yeah. Hey, you think the staff is hiring here? This is a nice place. _Jesus_, George, what happened to you?"

"I forgot to tip the waiter," I drawled.

"Hell, yeah, I'm workin' here," he nodded to himself. "Be back."

On the monitor, Emma was writing something down on a card, which she slid over to Evans.

"—locker at a health club is the first place they'd—" Evans sounded irritated as he read the card.

"—elp it, I couldn't take it home, my—"

"—etter than your home, sure—"

"—way, not my locker, it's a frie—"

"—have to—get this out quick—"

Emma nodded. Evans waved his hand, looked away from the table.

"—go now, can't take any chances," Evans continued.

Emma shook her head. "—to get out for good. I'll stay tonight with my—"

Calvin walked up to the table. Evans said something and Calvin nodded. He pulled out a small device that printed out Evans' bill. The spy hastily looked it over and gave a credit card to Calvin. Calvin smiled and said something that made Emma and Evans laugh as he ran the card through the handheld device. A second piece of paper rolled out of the machine. Calvin handed the paper and a cheap pen to Evans.

As Evans leaned forward to work out the tip and sign his name, Calvin bent across the long table, clearing drink glasses onto a round tray.

Blocked from Evans' view, Emma stuck a fake head wound to her right temple and pressed hard. Fake blood spurted out, spraying her face with little red droplets. A thick line of red oozed down her cheek. She slumped backwards.

The bar's background music stopped for a moment between songs.

Calvin stood up, the tray in his arms.

A modern, gray, semi-automatic pistol, equipped with silencer, lay on the middle of the table. A spent round rolled lazily toward the table's far end.

Evans looked up from his bill.

"Jesus, he _shot_ her!" Calvin screamed. "He shot—"

On the other monitors, everyone on the vicinity turned towards the table. Evans stared around in disbelief. His eyes shot back and forth between the gun and Emma, trying to absorb the total change in situation. And then he fixed his eyes on Calvin, as if seeing him for the first time in his life. His mouth gaped in dark realization.

"He's got a gun!" Calvin shrieked like a soprano.

Someone thought to scream. The crowd suddenly ran in all directions.

"—olicia!" someone shouted.

Calvin ran into the throng of panicked patrons and disappeared.

"—uck this!" Evans shouted. He tucked Emma's neatly written card into his shirt pocket, took one last regretful look at her, grimaced hard, and shot like a wet cat for the front door, leaving the gun behind.

Up in the control room, Nace Mikolčević was beside himself with discordant laughter.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

My Scrambler knocked and shuddered for a few moments after I had turned it off. I think that the climb up the interwoven parking garage ramps may have exhausted it.

The ocean wind whipped through the garage, and even though summer was nearly in full swing in Miami, the swirling nighttime air felt unnaturally cold to me. I pinned on my badge and trudged to the elevators in the center of Nawang's oceanfront condominium tower. And when I say "Nawang's condominium," I mean the entire building, which he picked up for pennies during the lowest point of the real estate bust, if what Nace had told me was true. He didn't even actually buy the building. He bought the holding company that owned it.

Emma and Calvin were already waiting by the elevator. Emma was wearing a black, sparkly, and eye-wateringly slinky cocktail dress. It looked very good on her, setting off her pale complexion. Its short skirt blew freely in the wind, and I found myself wishing that it were just slightly windier. Calvin was wearing the same suit he had worn to the interview. He popped some chewing gum into his mouth and pocketed the wrapper.

As for me, I was adorned with grease-stained jeans and a black tee-shirt that said, "BECAUSE I CAN READ IT THIS WAY." Written upside-down. As a concession, my flip-flops were new.

"I've never seen you wear that before," I said to Emma.

She shrugged. "You've never been in my closet," she answered.

"I've never been in your anything, now that I think about it," I waggled my eyebrows.

Emma snorted irritably. "There's a whole list of reasons for that, lover boy. Your eye looks a lot better than last night. Did you get a doctor to look at it today?"

"No," I shook my head. "I have some old-fashioned remedies that my mother passed down to me."

"I wish you would give more credence to modern medical science," she frowned unhappily.

"Hey," I put my hand to my heart. "I'm their number one fan. I just can't afford the modern medical invoice."

The elevator opened. A pair of body guards, dressed in cheap sports jackets, stood at attention in the back. The older one looked us up and down and waved us in.

"The party is on the eighth floor," he said to us in Spanish. "Mister Nawang requests that you stay on that floor unless invited elsewhere by the staff. There's another party on the fifth floor tonight, but that's being hosted by sports agents who don't want their young guests to be seen."

"How many people are at the party?" I turned back to him.

He seemed to chew on something for a minute. "You ever been to one of Mister Nawang's parties before?"

I shook my head.

"When he purchased the building, he remodeled several of the floors for private entertainment. The whole eighth floor is reserved for your party. But, since it's a Tuesday night, the crowd will be relatively light. Mister Nawang loves a good party. He keeps people like me and Julio busy all the time, right?"

Julio, the other guard, nodded and smiled to himself.

"Eighth floor, enjoy the party, Mister Saga," the older one said. "You won't need your badges, now."

* * *

><p>We entered a dim, coquelicot-red world of downtemo electronica and Chinese trance background music. In spite of myself, I found myself relaxing, getting my mellow on.<p>

A couple of college-aged girls tottered over to us. I thought I recognized one of them from the telephone pool back at the firm, only now she was heavy on the eyelash gunk, and even heavier on the vodka. She and her friend zeroed right in on Calvin, who had been forced to shift his eyeglasses to the top of his ultra-curly hair.

"Can I take your coat?" she asked, and burst into a fit of giggling and snorting.

"Want to ride my bicycle?" the other girl slurred, and the pair fell into each other with laughter.

"Say, hey loddie-loddie," Eyelash Girl started to sing, badly. She wasn't looking at anyone in particular. "Hey loddie-loddie!"

Calvin looked back at us, apologetically. He held his left hand to his face, giving us the sign of the telephone. "I'm being called," he said.

"Lucky you," Emma observed.

In spite of the gloom, I thought I saw Calvin turn a little red. "Twice lucky, I'm hoping," he put his dark glasses back on. "Hey, ladies, my name's Calvin. How can I entertain you two this evening?" As smooth as silk, he took the two girls in his arms and they wandered off to find a private corner for themselves.

"That kid puts me to shame," I said.

"Figured that out, did you?" Emma shook her head in mock despair. Or, I hoped it was mock despair.

"Hey, whatever happened to Miss Supportive?" I protested, putting my arm through hers as we ambled into the reception area.

"She burned her bra," Emma said.

"Ah," I mused. "And is that bad, or good?"

"Depends on whether you're the bra," she answered.

"Let me know when you're ready to burn your dress," I didn't say.

Not far from the elevator door, we ran across a directory of the floor. It turned out Nawang had partitioned the floor into a collection of venues—two types of dance floors, a sports bar, a smoking room, a beatnik lounge, a small soundstage, and a maze of semi-private nooks, among other cryptic-sounding rooms.

A well-groomed man wearing a lightweight headphone stood to one side. "Have you been here before?" he asked. "Want help selecting a venue?"

"I almost hate to ask," Emma glanced at the directory, "but what's the 'Leather Room'?"

The man laughed. "It's made up like a ski lodge. It has big leather chairs and couches, and lots of fireplaces. Romantic. People go there to relax and get away from the noise of the party.

"Right now, the biggest crowds are in the rave floor and sports bar. If you like classic guitar, there's some aficionados hanging out at the sound stage."

"I'd go to the sound stage, if I were you," a voice carried from behind us. "The guitarist doesn't even use a pick. He's pasted cut-up ping-pong balls onto his fingernails and plays with all five fingers. Never heard anything like it in my life."

"Iverna!" I said, turning. "Thanks for helping us get the job."

"Quote me something, dahling."

"For you? 'I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, a stage where every man must play a part, and mine a sad one.'"

She sighed theatrically. "Word on the street is you all earned your pay, with interest," our agent took a sip from a Long Island iced tea. "They gave you a thirty percent bonus for the day's work, and asked if you want to stay on with them a bit longer for some more 'odd jobs'. I didn't ask them what that means, and they didn't offer to say, anyway. Emma, I really dig your dress."

Didn't I tell Emma I liked her dress? Okay, not exactly, but she knew by the way I was drooling at her, right? That counts, doesn't it?

"Thanks," Emma smiled. "I won't even bother complimenting you, you just always look stylin'."

"Heh," Iverna primped her hair dramatically. "Keep the compliments rolling, honey, I live for 'em."

"Have you seen a guy named Elliot Dyer?" I asked the information dude.

"Yeah, I think. Let me ask." He pressed a finger in his headpiece and whispered with his operator. "Yeah, he's over in the beatnik lounge. He, ah—nothing. You can't miss him."

"Thanks," I said. "Do you two mind if I head out for a couple of minutes? There's a guy I want to talk to."

"An infamous wayward husband," Emma said to Iverna.

"Oh, ah," Iverna pursed her lips. "Want some backup?"

"Better not," I held my hands up. "There's some, uh, personal things about his wife that he needs to know."

"In that case, remember that Big Brother loves a party," Iverna looked upwards toward the black ceiling. "Meet us at the sound stage when you're done. Dahlink."

* * *

><p>At the threshold of the beatnik café, a hostess handed me a black beret to wear. I put it on, feeling kind of stupid.<p>

The café consisted of dingy brick walls tagged with graffiti that looked a little too artsy, and some purposefully torn and stressed posters with pictures that were too abstract for my small brain. The tables were Japanese-low, complete with floor pillows instead of chairs. In the far end of the room was a small stage, decorated with a pair of dusty-looking bongos. Shadeless incandescent lights hung from the ceiling by bare wires. And speaking of shades, the ceiling was totally covered with a double-layer of ultra-dark sunglasses. They unsettled me. It was a little like standing right underneath the eye of a giant housefly.

Xavier Díaz—White Court vampire, with Elliot Dyer—selkie, and a conservative-looking girl who I didn't recognize sat cross-legged on the stage, with the girl sitting between the two men.

The girl was blindfolded, and she was smiling hugely.

The two men sat facing her. Xavier was staring at her intently, his eyes eerily unblinking and opened a little too wide. His pupils seemed a little dilated. Elliot sat with his arms crossed but otherwise looked completely at ease. He had the ghost of a smile on his lips.

I instantly hated both of them. I had the sudden irrational urge to run up and rescue the girl. Actually, knowing who both of those guys were, maybe it wasn't such an irrational reaction.

Most everyone else in the room was standing up, enthralled with the threesome.

"What's up?" I asked a person standing near the back of the crowd, a woman wearing a rather tight-fitting tee-shirt and jeans.

"It's a challenge," she whispered in my ear. "Xavier has been wearing the crown of most eligible bachelor next to Isaac since our firm started, but Elliot begs to differ. So Elliot challenged Xavier to a round of the dating game. Whoever gets the date is the undisputed king-expectant of Casanovas. They've been going at it for the last ten minutes."

"Holy scones," I said. "Who's the chick?"

"Don't know. She doesn't work for us. Somebody's friend, I think. She's never met either of them, that's why they picked her."

The bachelorette held up her hand and the room quieted. "Bachelor One," she said, "if you ruled the world, what would your first law be?"

Xavier snorted. "Baby, I already _do_ rule the world. And I'd give it all to you, for just one kiss from your angelic lips." I could have sworn that his unblinking eyes somehow blinked even less. He was leaning closer to her, almost straining, while Elliot looked on without moving a muscle.

The crowd in the room shifted restlessly. It seemed odd to me that Xavier didn't seem more influential to us. But I didn't want to risk opening up my third eye again to see what was really going on.

The bachelorette pursed her lips. "Bachelor Two? Same question."

Elliot stretched, cricked his neck to the right. "If I were made the ruler of the world, I'd make a free dating service for anyone to use who doesn't have someone. I'd make it safe, and I'd make it truthful. Because I strongly believe that no one in the world should be lonely for even one moment. Life is too short and too hard for anyone to live without love."

The bachelorette nodded. She rubbed her hands together, thinking. "Okay, Bachelor One, since you're scoping out my lips, what would you say is the difference between sexuality and sensuality?"

The vampire seemed to squirm. Who would have thought that he would get a vocabulary question? He probably wasn't sure what the difference really was. Come to think of it, I didn't know the difference either, except vaguely. Xavier cleared his throat, as determined as ever to win his girl. "Sexuality is when you and I make passionate, beautiful love all through the night. Sensuality is when you dream about me every night afterwards." He smiled hugely, thinking he had nailed it.

A sullen silence fell over the spectators. Xavier believed what he was saying. It probably was exactly what happened with his victims who lived. _His power isn't working_, I realized. _Something is blocking it. Something more powerful than a vampire, at least when it comes to actual matters of the heart—or _someone_._ My eyes returned to Elliot. He hadn't moved. But his sly smile was just slightly wider. He was enjoying seeing Xavier squirm. And, oh, how he was. His words must have never needed to be more than just window dressing when he had his demon to talk for him. Now everyone realized just how hollow those words were. And Xavier knew that we knew. I hoped he wasn't contemplating killing us.

"Bachelor Two, same question?" the girl asked.

Elliot leaned closer to her. His voice was so quiet that I almost couldn't hear him. "Sensuality," he whispered, "is when I tickle your naked body with my perfect red rose. Sexuality is when you tickle me back with yours."

The spectators who managed to hear him snapped their fingers in appreciation.

Xavier seethed. "Ask _him_ the next question first," he said to the bachelorette.

"No," she simply answered.

Now he did blink. He worked his hands into fists nervously.

"Bachelor One, what is your idea of a perfect marriage proposal?"

"Ma-?" he looked incredulous. Cattle don't discuss marriage with the ranchers, he was obviously thinking. Oh, how he was going to lose now. "Baby," he said in an oily voice, "I'd give you the biggest, baddest, most rock and roll proposal the world has ever seen! I'd rent out a football stadium, and bring you to the fifty yard line in a limousine with a swimming pool in the back, and I'd jump out of a helicopter from above, and on a streamer tied to me, I'd tell you about my undying love. And instead of fireworks, there'd be a hundred thousand bottles of champagne popping all at the same time in your honor. And I'd get down on my knees and worship you as the living goddess that you truly are, for all the world to see."

"Wow," the bachelorette said. Xavier beamed.

"Uh, and Bachelor Number Two? How would you top that?"

Elliot thought it over. "I don't know if I can top that, but the original question was, 'what is a perfect marriage proposal?' And I think I can give you an answer to that. You see, when two people really love each other, and know that they are meant for each other, and want to be with each other for the rest of their days, it doesn't really matter if the guy falls out of the canoe trying to get on one knee, or if the ring falls though a hole in his pocket, or if it rains on them as they look for a romantic place to talk. We're all human, and things don't always go as planned. But it's still okay, because the only thing that it takes to make a proposal perfect is whether it has a happy ending. When two people who have sought each other all their lives, now know for sure that they have found each other, forever."

The bachelorette was very quiet.

"Okay," she said, "I've decided I'll date Bachelor Number Two." She took off her blindfold and looked at the two men who had contested over her. And when she looked at Elliot, she broke into a shy smile. He held out his hand to her, and she took it.

Xavier snorted. He stood up and walked away without a word to anyone.

"Long live the King of Casanovas!" the lady next to me shouted, her arm pumped into the air. Laughter filled the room, and the sound of snapping fingers grew louder. A few people playfully tossed their berets in the air, and I followed suit just so that I could ditch the stupid thing.

The whole contest had left me dumbfounded. I had watched Xavier working the strings. They just weren't connected to anything. It was like someone had cut the throttle wire in his car. He was jamming down on the petal, but the engine wasn't listening. I didn't even know that could happen to a vampire.

I followed the pair of lovebirds out, waiting for the crowd to thin a little before I said anything to him. "Elliot," I said. "Can I have a quick word with you? Uh, in private?"

"Do I know you?" he turned back to me, his brows furrowed.

"No," I glanced at the girl, not wanting to say too much. "It's about your work at the Seaquarium."

He glared at me suspiciously.

"A friend of yours asked me to look you up," I added.

"Can this wait? We're sort of on a date," the girl said.

Elliot touched her arm with his hand reassuringly. She shuddered with pleasure. "It's okay, this will just take a couple of minutes. Right?"

"Right," I said.

"I'll meet you by the elevators," he spoke softly to the girl. "I'll only be gone five minutes, I promise."

The girl glared at me icily. "See you."

"Okay, there's a buffet room right over here. It's usually quiet at this hour." He led me through a short maze of nooks to a room with a serving table along the entire back wall. The table had been laden with appetizers, but most of them had already been picked over. I helped myself to some leftover crackers and smoked gouda.

That's when Elliot tackled me. I lost my footing and we both rolled to the floor. He got on top of me and put his hands around my throat.

"What have you done to her?" he demanded hotly. As if I could answer him. He was a lot stronger than he looked. "Haven't you people already done enough? You can do whatever you want to me, but if you involve her, I'm going to start killing people, you understand? Understand? You tell that to Nawang!"

I gurgled. I think my face might have started to turn color, because he suddenly let go. But he didn't get off of me.

"Ava—" I gasped. "Ava—made me promise to find you."

Elliot hissed. "It would be just like her," he groaned. "She doesn't know when she endangers people. It just doesn't occur to her."

"I hope," I coughed, "it doesn't bother her that you're going out on dates. I thought you were married."

"We—" he started, and then stopped himself. "It's not a proper Christian marriage. It's just our way of saying that we are special to each other. But we're still going to be what we are. You know about us, right?"

I nodded.

"Then you know that we _can't_ get married in the Christian way. The Bible says that people who go through what we do, don't have marriages any more."

He meant, people who _die_.

"She's worried about you. She sent me to find you. If you want to see her again, go to this place." I handed him a card with the location of my boat.

But he threw the card back at me as if he were burned. "No!" he groaned. "You don't understand! They _own_ me now! I don't want her anywhere near me! You don't know what they've done to—"

The sound of footsteps interrupted us. A man in a white suit casually leaned on the doorframe. Isaac Wright looked at the two of us, still on the floor, wry amusement on his face.

"Did I interrupt your foreplay?" he casually scratched one of his fangs with his fingernail. "Hey, Elliot, that was nice work with the thrall. But you've gone and left her unprotected by the elevator, and Xavier knows where she is. I wonder what he might do about it?"

His head lowered in close-mouthed submission, Elliot helped me up from the floor, and pushed his way past Isaac, who was quietly laughing to himself.

"He tries so hard," Isaac said to me. "Just like you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I wanted to thank you for your team's excellent work on Monday. I doubt that the enemy is stupid enough to bite, but you have to try. It's part of the game. And you never know, sometimes you get lucky."

"What was in the locker that Emma sent Evans after?"

Isaac shrugged. "Fake evidence. That Echemendía was in bed with Chinese slavers. Memos, things like that. But we also made indisputable documents to prove that the stuff in the locker was fake. We weave such tangled webs, don't we? Just like you."

"I'm not weaving any webs, dude," I said. "I'm just here to get some crackers and cheese."

From across the room, the White Court vampire held his hand out towards a full glass of merlot sitting on the serving table. He narrowed his eyes and flexed his fingers, and the full glass lifted up and floated to his waiting hand. He delicately plucked it out of the air, not spilling a drop.

_Crap_, I thought. _On top of being a vampire, he's been studying magic under somebody. And I always spill a little, the show-off bastard._

"Surprised?" he said, his eyes fixed firmly upon me.

"Parlor trick," I shrugged. "You should go on tv."

The vampire frowned. He set the wine down on a nearby side table and walked over to face me directly.

"Is that so?" he hissed in a stage whisper. "And do you call it a parlor trick out of sheer ignorance, or personal experience?"

I could feel him applying pressure to my mind, using a strange and powerful concoction of his vampiric and magical skills, but I wasn't about to cave in to him. "It's just a parlor trick," I repeated.

He forced his will upon my mind harder, an outright attack. If it had been physical, it would have been like getting a golf driver in the kidney. "I hope for your sake that you aren't spying for the White Council. We don't want your kind here, _wizard_," he blew into my ear. "Who on the WC sent you here?"

If I hadn't been trained for his mental attack, I'd be gurgling drool by this point. But my father had insisted that I learn how to beat mental dominance. As an undercover Warden, it was one of his most important tricks. And to show how serious he was about it, he let my uncle Senge teach me. Every day. For nine months. Uncle Senge made me crawl on the floor and bark like a dog. Each month, I got stronger and more clever at holding him back. But he never let me win.

Isaac was good at this, very good. He hit me with a two-pronged attack, magical and demonic. But he was no two thousand year old vampire. I steeled my mind and lubricated it. My thoughts shot around Isaac's mental grasp like a greased pig.

I looked at him blankly. "White Council? Is that like the KKK, or something? They got wizards, don't they?"

Faster than I could blink, the vampire slugged me in the cheek, driving me down to the ground. I stayed there, meekly looking back at him.

He pointed a bony finger at me. "I'm watching you. Never forget that we're all watching you."

This time, he picked up the wine the old fashioned way before stalking out, while I rubbed my swelling cheek.

"What's with the white suits, anyway?" I raised my voice through the open doorway. "You got dandruff problems, or something?"

And then he stamped back in, angrily. I thought I was dead.

"Come with me," he ordered.

"Where?" I said, warily.

"Penthouse," he answered. "The CEO wants a word with you."

* * *

><p>We entered a different, teak-lined elevator on our way to the penthouse. There were no guards in the elevator this time. Isaac inserted a key into the control panel before selecting the top floor.<p>

I wasn't really going to ask where this guy Nawang got all his money. It couldn't have been from just ordinary campaign contributors. Let's face it, Echemendía was a two-bit candidate in the grand scheme of things, no matter how big a name he might be in ten years; he could never draw in the kind of money needed to finance this party, let alone the firm. But then again, Echemendía was probably just one of many candidates that the firm represented. And with helpful folks like Isaac and Elliot on the payroll, I had to wonder how many of our contributors were completely voluntary. I shuddered.

The questions about Nawang swirled about my mind as the elevator dinged and the doors opened onto a short, wide hallway. A bodyguard stood behind one of a pair of giant foo-dog statues that faced me, teeth bared and tongues protruding. _Nice doggie_, I thought.

Isaac led me through a living room. It was decorated with artwork from China and Tibet, mostly crafted just before the Chinese revolution. Some of the artwork looked like it must have originally been owned by the very wealthy, right before they had their throats slashed by the People. A lot of the décor reminded me of my parents' old living room, except that it was a thousand times more rare and expensive.

We turned westward, and Isaac led me through a hurricane-proofed sliding glass door onto a large balcony that overlooked the sprawling city beneath us. The multicolored lights gleamed like a jeweled spider's web, scintillating in the night wind, which blew more fiercely than ever at this height. A line of yellow ocher and black flags tied to the wall above the balcony door flapped and whipped like sails in a squall.

I noticed another guard standing quietly in the shadows in one corner of the balcony, but Isaac led me in the other direction, to a patio table surrounded with cushioned chairs. In the center of the table had been placed a black-lacquered tray bearing an antique Tibetan tea kettle and two probably priceless cups.

Nawang was sitting in one of the chairs, cast in semi-darkness. He was wearing a smoking jacket. I had never actually seen a smoking jacket before. I guess rich people actually wore them, after all. To distinguish themselves from the smoke-jacketless rabble.

He stood as I approached.

"Thank you, Isaac," he said in Tibetan. "How is the party going?"

Isaac glanced at me. "Fine," he answered in English. "Xavier got owned by Elliot tonight."

"That's why I brought Elliot into the circle. There's much he could teach the three of you, if you were willing to swallow some pride."

Isaac looked away. "I'd better go back. With your permission, Lama."

"As you wish," Nawang indicated that I sit, and then sat himself. He picked up the tea kettle and poured first into my cup, then his own. "You are in my home," he said. "I offer to you the hospitality and safety of my house." In his own way, he was promising that he had not poisoned the tea.

I picked up the other cup and saluted him back. "I thank you and I accept."

"Your hair," he pointed a finger at my thick, jet-black shoulder-length mane. "Is that the style for young Tibetan men, now?"

"I'm American, too," I said.

He took a sip of his tea. "Yes, we all are, after a fashion. But I am not very different from the older Cubans who live here. I was forced from Tibet, but in my mind, I never really left there. The dichotomy has made my present life a little dreamlike."

"That should appeal to the Buddhist side of you," I said.

"Yes," he mused. "If I were still a Buddhist." He looked me up and down for a moment, gauging me. "Isaac believes that you are a wizard. He fears that you were sent to spy upon us by the White Council."

I stopped my tea in mid-sip. "And what do you think?"

"I think," he pointed his index-finger straight upwards, and a lick of flame shot out of it, "that the White Council would not insult me by sending us one so inexperienced as you. Please take no personal offense." He closed his hand, the fire gone.

"Then why tell me at all?" I ventured.

"Because Isaac has finely honed instincts. His paranoia leads him to the wrong ultimate conclusions, but if you listen to the words within his words, you can see the points where he has stumbled upon small truths. Isaac senses that you are a wizard, therefore you must be a tool of his enemies. QED. But I see something different."

He placed an eight by twelve photo on the table. It was a picture of me drinking the potion at Pueblos. "We used the cameras to time your ear-boxing punch during the fight. You moved faster than a Master. If you had wanted, you could have easily dispatched your assailants. It took remarkable courage for you to engineer your loss. It's one of your qualities that seemed salient to me."

"A potion doesn't make me a wizard."

"I could study your genealogy, if I chose. It would not take me long to find the evidence of who you are, and what you can do. Do you wish to make me prove my point? There is no hurry for us."

He had me. He had my real identity, and I couldn't stop him from figuring out the rest. "You're Isaac's master," I finally understood. Isaac wasn't kidding, then, when he called Nawang a Lama. He really was one. A powerful one, if he commanded a trio of vampires. And yet here he was, sitting around as a CEO of an underhanded American public relations firm. I didn't get it. What kind of lama was this guy, anyway?

He smiled indulgently. "Isaac is just a study, something I did to exercise my own teaching skill. But someday I hope to find a more worthy student."

_Oh_, I thought. _So that's what this is all about._

"And I thought you were just offering me some tea," I said, a bit too sarcastically.

He just nodded, as if expecting that from me.

"Humor an old man for a moment. Make the flags above us stop waving."

I frowned. "Look, ah, Mister Nawang, it's nothing personal but—"

He waited me out.

"—but, my idea of a master doesn't normally involve a guy who hangs out with vampires. And politicians. And whatever else you hang out with. No offense."

"None taken," he said. "Is it that you have something personal against vampires, or do you fear that I operate outside of the laws of the White Council?"

"I have this nagging fear that you're going to turn out to be a dangerous megalomaniac."

"It's kind of you to tell me."

"All part of the service."

"You know, the real world doesn't work that way. You realize this, yes? It's true, I break the White Council's laws from time to time. But the Tibetan Lamas were never signatories of the White Council. For centuries, we operated as parallel concerns, with the understanding that we had more common ground than not. But we were never the same, and I have never considered myself answerable to them, any more than I am answerable to Mexico or Canada."

"And the vampires?"

"I have worked to tame them, to some extent. I have made them dependent on me. Now they must answer when I call. In so doing, I have made them less of a danger to the outer world."

"If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with?"

"Now I know you're being flippant. Even if you're right."

"You could have killed them, instead of hiring them."

"Ah. And how many should I kill? Have you ever heard of anyone trying to kill all vampires? Do you think such a thing is even remotely achievable?" He looked at me critically for a moment. "But now I think I understand you. You are thinking about the White Council's war on the Red Court vampires. The White Council has decreed that all Red Court vampires must be exterminated. Do you think they will succeed, where none have before, and with such few numbers on their side?"

I had no answer to that. I looked down at my tea.

"The Spiral of Daggers is broken, so you cannot join their ranks as you would have a century ago. That leaves the White Council as the wizard's last refuge. And _that_ brings us to you, and a single question. Why aren't you with the White Council now, fighting their vampire enemies, side by side with the other wizards? An interesting question, yes?"

I looked really, really hard at my tea.

"And hence my interest in you. Does it not strike you that we might share more than you originally thought? Both of us are estranged from our worlds. Both of us are getting by with the resources that we find."

I looked around the high-priced balcony. "Uh, yeah," I said.

He smiled. "I have more resources because I need more resources. All that you see follows an ultimate purpose."

"And that purpose is?"

"Perhaps I wish to make the world a better place to live in."

"Bullshit."

He shook his head, smiling. "Not at all."

"Better for who, then?"

"You are young. You haven't seen real atrocity. You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

"Truly? Then I will. Go ahead. Make the flags stop waving."

"Why?"

"I want to see your technique."

I didn't owe this guy anything. It's not like I was out looking for another master. Just the opposite, in fact. But somehow, I wanted to show him what I could do. I had spent the last year running from the White Council. For the last year, I thought that I would never train under a master again. I was drifting, homeless, and I knew it. Maybe he knew it, too. Even the remote possibility that I might be able to finish what I had started out in life doing posed a powerful temptation to me. And what kind of hypocrite was I being, criticizing him for hanging out with vampires, when my honorary uncle was one, too?

Anyway, I hadn't accepted his offer, yet, right? I could back out any time.

I looked up at the beating flags. The wind was very strong. "Tricky," I said.

He pushed his chair back and got up, moving over to the edge of the balcony. "Show me," he challenged. He sat cross-legged on the ground and leaned back on the railing, relaxed. His bald head gleamed in the moonlight, even as the rest of him seemed to disappear into the murk of the night.

I ran through the options that I had. I could try to own the wind with elemental magic. I could try to hold out the wind with a shield, although shields aren't really meant for that.

Elemental magic wasn't my strong suit, even though it seemed like the best fit. But part of my problem is that Tibetans don't have an element of Air. We subscribe to the same elements as the Chinese: Earth, Metal, Water, Wood, and Fire. Air as an element is a more Western concept, and I'm not as adept at employing the Western style of magic.

I spent the next half-minute surveying my immediate domain, taking a quick stock of my assets. There wasn't much for me to work with, but I guess that was the challenge. Magic isn't always just about pointing your finger at something and hollering. My high school football coach did that a lot during games, and I guarantee you nothing magical ever happened with our team. In a lot of ways, practicing elemental magic is not much different from practicing chemistry—you put the right things together and you get an effect. Think physics but with an alternate set of physical laws, combined with a little mental persuasion.

What that means is, for some kinds of magic, you need actual stuff to help you out. The hollering just impresses the yokels, or makes you feel better.

I stopped at a serving table laden with some basic condiments. I lifted up a porcelain container of sugar, which I passed up, and a full jar of mustard with a little brush, which I took. I helped myself to a fistful of wooden coffee stirrers, and a clean cloth napkin.

Returning to the table, I poured myself a fresh cup of tea, cleared off the rest of the table, and jumped onto it, carefully surveying the table-top. It was shaped like a perfect circle. Better and better.

Biting my lip with concentration, I pulled out the mustard brush and began to paint runes along the entire border of the table, running in a circle.

It's hard to explain to a layman what runes really do, because there's no direct analogy in the world of particle physics and Newtonian law.

The universe has no sense of obligation about us. But it does hear us, if we use words that it understands. And runes are one of those things it hears. _Why_ the universe perceives them, I don't know. Maybe writing them is like writing a computer program that is executed by the creaking gears of the cosmos. Maybe by writing a rune, we're really hacking into what is supposed to be a closed system. I genuinely worry about these things. I worry that when I write a rune, I may be breaking something that I really don't want broken. If I knew more about what I was doing, maybe I'd worry less. My previous master never seemed to fret over it. But then again, he's prematurely dead, and I'm not. There's got to be some kind of lesson to learn there.

But in spite of my personal hang-ups and anxieties, I wrote the runes anyway. I hoped the universe wouldn't mind that I was painting them in mustard.

Mentally, I reached out and touched the edge of the circle, closing it. Within the circle, I was now isolated from the natural fields of magical influence weaving around me, in the same way that the firm's headquarters was isolated from cell phone radio waves. Essentially, I had temporarily made for myself a magical Faraday cage. Doing this allowed me to construct my own magical effect inside of a kind of magical clean room—the purer the effect, the more potent it would be when I unleashed it.

Sitting cross-legged in the center of the table, I took up the pile of coffee stirrers and broke them into pieces, arranging them into a tiny campfire. With a quick murmur of magic, I lit them on fire and quickly doused the flames with a few drops of my tea.

A wisp of smoke wafted up from the miniature campfire. Symbolically, the smoke was my access point to the element of air. I mentally tied the little wisp to the circle of runes that surrounded it, applying my program to it.

And then I collapsed the Faraday cage, releasing my program to the world. "Element of air," I intoned in halting Latin, "I command thee. I command thee. I command thee."

The air around me responded. I could feel it starting to synchronize with my thoughts. Mentally, I ordered the wind to stop blowing around the flags. At first, I could feel it working. The wind slowed. The flags began to flap less rapidly, to grow a little limp. But then I felt a _presence_. I felt the element of air pushing back at me, as if it sensed a foreign object that it rejected. I had never encountered that before. I had never found an intelligence behind an element, even a Western one. It baffled me, but I was determined to win out. I pushed back. I used my own will to bind the air around me. But then the air returned the favor, pushing back even harder. It shoved me.

Slowly, I looked back, behind me. At Nawang.

He was still sitting cross-legged, with his back to the railing of the patio. But a nimbus of white light surrounded him. His eyes were closed in concentration. And he was vaguely smiling.

The little smoking-jacketed bastard was overriding my spell with his own. Without a circle, without runes, without mustard.

He hadn't just wanted to see my form. He intended to destruction-test it. He wanted to find its breaking point.

I kept pushing on the spell I had, trying to coax some life into it, but there was no way I was ever going to out-muscle an actual Tibetan Lama. There had to be another way. I thought about the words of his challenge.

Before I even realized what I was doing, I found the cloth napkin in my hands. I knew what I was going to do now. I was going to do what I should have done in the first place. He had asked me to make the flags stop flapping. He had never said anything about the wind.

Gently, I spread the napkin out on the table, flattening it out with the palm of my hand. At the same time, I mentally kept up at my previous spell, in the hopes of holding Nawang occupied. I began to whisper Tibetan words at the napkin, arranging energies in my mind. With a little coaxing, the napkin stiffened, becoming as hard as a piece of plywood. And then I created an affinity between the napkin and the flags.

It was exhausting work. I was diverting my attention between two spells at the same time, one of which was being sabotaged by someone much stronger than me at magic. It was tough to keep up the discipline to not drop everything and come to the rescue of the spell that was under attack.

I got up from the table and walked over to Nawang, the napkin in my hands. My eyes rolled up into my head momentarily as I completely let go of the first spell. The balcony shook with the sudden burst of wind.

Nawang opened his eyes, looking at me with sudden disappointment. But I merely jabbed my thumb up over my shoulder, pointing at the flags. He pulled a pair of thin-wired glasses out from an inside pocket of his smoking jacket and put them on, looking up above the doorway to his penthouse apartment.

The wind was blowing like a gale, but the flags were as stiff as wood. I held up the napkin for him to see.

He suddenly laughed aloud.

"I have seen enough," he said. "Now I know the manner of your training. It is certainly diverse. I can see that you have already had many teachers in your brief time of study. It is a shame you had to grow up in such times as these, when the world will not appreciate your art. You will have to find satisfaction in other ways. But this is not impossible, lobsang."

_Disciple_, he had called me.

"I never said I was looking for a new master, Lama," I said.

He frowned. "I never said I would accept you as my student. I think one day you could make a fine wizard, should that be your fate. You have all the skills that you need to progress to the next level. But you have been on your own for too long. You lack the self-discipline to achieve what you desire.

"There was a time when disciples in Tibet would grovel for years to be taught by the guru. They would sacrifice all that they were to prepare themselves for instruction, and to gain his notice. Now, the young people like you would look up teachers like me on the internet to see how many stars my previous students gave me. Everyone seems to be out for himself. The world has become a myopic place, in many ways."

"You would reject me if I groveled," I answered.

"Perhaps, depending on the creativity of your supplication. But you are right. The rules of the world are different, and we must operate accordingly. I only hope that you understand what it means to live in a dog eat dog world. I fear that you do not. I fear that you will find out the hard way, and very soon.

"I am going to retire to my apartment now. Take some time to consider what you have seen tonight. Tomorrow morning I will have need of you. Get a good night's sleep." Seemingly without effort, he stood up and walked back to the penthouse. The guard opened the door for him. As he passed through the doorway, my napkin suddenly went limp, and the flags began to flutter again. I hadn't even seen him waggle a finger.

A gust of wind blew the napkin out of my hand. It whipped out over the railing and spun downwards to the quiet street below, disappearing in the murk.

I studied the urban darkness beneath me, considering his unspoken offer.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

I was surprised to find a crowd of people standing around and talking freely in the sound stage room, but it seemed that the guitarist had finished by the time I had arrived. Emma and Iverna were chatting with a pair of lanky artiste-guys. Something about the artistes annoyed me. So soon after my dueling match with the Lama, I really didn't want to engage in any more small talk. I was too physically drained. Instead, I decided to give them a little more time to themselves before breaking up their little party.

A glass of red wine on a side tray called out to me, so I took it and checked out the rest of the room, gravitating towards the back, where the light was dim, and there were fewer people. In the very back of the room, Elliot was quietly sitting, nursing a Drambuie. Next to him, a middle-aged man sat with his head flopped backwards, quietly snoring.

"What happened to your date?" I asked taking a sip of my wine.

"George, it's yourself. Xavier found her alone," he rasped. "It's all my fault."

I sat down next to him. "Sorry," I said. "Can you make it up later?"

He slowly shook his head. "No tomorrow. Not for her. She's not the first I've seen him take."

I took in a breath, let it out. It was my fault, not his. I was the one who had called him away. "Let's go. Tonight."

He rumbled with a bitter laugh. "They would never let me go. I am their cash cow. How do you think the firm draws in so much money? It comes from the rich, lonely people who find their way to me. And as a bonus, I manage not to accidentally kill my marks, unlike some others I could mention."

"They have no hold over you. Just get up and walk, soldier."

He laughed again. "No hold, you say. Just a little signature. And my skin, as insurance." He turned his head toward the man on his left. He poked him roughly with his finger. "Hey! Hey, you! Wake up, you."

The man's head rolled forward and he sleepily rubbed the bottom of his nose with the back of his hand.

"Hey!" Elliot said. "Tell my friend who you are."

The man looked at me with glassy, bloodshot eyes. "Francisco Echemendía," he said.

I put my drink down. "_The_ Echemendía? The eye of the campaign storm? Stashed in the corner of a dark room? I don't get it."

"He doesn't get it," Elliot said to Echemendía, and laughed aloud.

"Who are you?" Echemendía asked me.

I shook my head in confusion. "I'm no one, no one at all."

"Take my advice and keep it that way," he said. "Never be somebody. Never let them notice you."

"Why?" I said.

Echemendía just looked at me blearily. "The Devil is real. I've met—" he suddenly seemed to fold forward. When he caught his breath, he rambled on. "All I ever wanted to be was the top man. And I will be. Only now, I will despise every minute of it. I would give anything—" he struggled again.

"He can't tell you what's wrong," Elliot said to me. "Just as I can't. We are bought and paid for, you see. Take my advice, if you value any part of your life. Go away. Go far away. Tell Ava to dive deep. She'll understand."

"I can't just go away," I said.

"Yes, you can. And you will."

"Where is your skin?" I asked.

"Destroyed," he answered.

"Will you stop fighting with me? You just told me that they had it."

"Get lost," Elliot answered. "Go away, I mean it."

"All right," I held my hands up. "I'll go."

I picked up my glass of wine and headed back to Emma and Iverna, who were still conversing with the stupid artistes.

"Hi," I said, interrupting them.

Emma smiled at me. "Hey. John and Phil have invited us to a blues club down the street. Want to go? Maybe I'll play hooky from work tomorrow."

I looked John and Phil over, and shook my head. "Long day," I said. "I'd better check up on Ava at the boat, make sure she's still okay."

Emma's smile switched off. I hadn't meant to imply anything. I really just wanted to get some sleep.

"Sure," Emma said. "Why don't you do that?"

"Yeah," I said lamely. "Okay." Sometimes I'm such an ass.

* * *

><p>Midnight had come and gone, and the parking garage that once was full now only housed a smattering of cars. Tuesday night parties were overrated, I thought to myself. There were no people in the garage with me. Even the fierce wind that had blown through here earlier in the night had moved on. The yellow mercury lights buzzed indifferently, casting an unhealthy shade of mustard and flax on the remaining parked cars.<p>

As I neared my car, I sensed a movement in front of me, like the outline of a fey creature that was trying to be invisible, but not quite getting it right. I quietly cursed myself for not carrying my backpack with me to the party. With it, I could have set up a quick circle of magic. But then again, the last thing I had wanted was for Sir Fangs-A-Lot to have the chance to rummage through it and find more to be paranoid about.

I stopped and looked behind me. Two shapes, only a few yards behind me, came to a stop. I could see what they were, now, sort of. They weren't fey at all, but were ordinary people, covered head to toe in some kind of fabric made of millions of LEDs, providing them with some pretty impressive and probably very expensive camouflage.

"Huh," I said. I thought about reverse-hexing them.

That's when all three of them simultaneously drew out military-grade machine pistols, complete with cute little suppressors. I've never figured out why a gun always looks bigger when it's pointed directly at me.

_Okay_, I thought. _I'm two seconds into this engagement, and I'm already outclassed._

"Keep going to your car," the one nearest to me said in a soft Latin accent, waving his gun in an offhand way.

I wasn't sure if I could reverse-hex a pistol, and even if I did, it would probably just fire. Which I absolutely, definitely didn't want it to do right now.

"Follow your orders carefully, and you will survive the night," the talkative one said to me.

"Promise?" I risked asking.

"I can only speak for myself," he answered almost cheerfully. "I am not so sure about my friends. They get upset very easily."

"I like your outfits. Has anyone hacked your suit and programmed it to show a big red target?"

The other dude behind me coughed politely. We had caught up to the one originally in front of me, who turned and led the way.

"I believe this is your car. Take your keys out and drop them on the ground by your feet."

I looked at my car, unable to think of any fast moves that I could make to ditch my assailants.

"Does the cloth napkin on your windshield mean something? A signal?" Mister Talk said.

I smiled. The napkin that had been blown out of my hand at the penthouse had mysteriously found its way to my car, or at least one that looked just like it. I had to hand it to Nawang—he had some subtle moves.

"It means that my car has been set up with an explosive alarm," I said.

"We already checked your car out. There's no bomb. You going to drop the keys, or do we get persuasive?"

I dropped the keys.

"Keep moving. See the black SUV at the end of the row? That's where we're going."

As we moved forward, I saw a fourth figure move out of the shadows. I could hear my keys jingling behind me.

"If you already checked out my car, why did you need my keys at all?" I asked.

There was silence for a moment. "Did I say we checked out your car? Maybe I meant another car."

_Dammit_.

The parking lights on the SUV flashed. The dude in front of me opened the door to the back seat, flipped the child lock, and waved me in. The very solid door slammed behind me. Two of the guys climbed up in front, while Mister Talk got in the back seat with me through the other door. The driver pointed his gun at me while Mister Talk pulled off his gear and professionally folded it into a neat and compact package. When I looked up at the others in the front seat, they had already stored their gear as well. The one in the front passenger seat turned out to be a woman with short-cropped hair.

"I'm noticing that no one is pointing a gun at me," I said.

"Would you rather we did?" asked Mister Talk. "If it makes you feel better."

"No! The last thing I want to do is criticize. But it's nice to know you aim to please."

The man shrugged as the car pulled back and sped out of the building. "It's better to say that we _prefer_ to please. We still _aim_ to kill."

"Yeah," my voice suddenly sounded a little dry. "That's what I thought."

The car whipped down the mostly empty street, smoothly passing the other cars, ignoring the traffic lights.

"So, you're a wizard, huh?" Mister Talk cocked his head, looking me over.

I didn't answer. Whoever he was, it wasn't his business.

"Can your magic keep the palmetto bugs out of my apartment?" he asked me, a little too cheerfully.

I sighed. "There are limits to every power," I answered.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," he grinned wryly.

"Have you tried shooting them?" I countered.

"Just makes a mess," he said. For the life of me, I couldn't tell if he was joking.

He extended a callused hand to me. "Angel Lopez."

"And you are?"

"Your protector and companion. I am taking you to my boss, for a quick talk."

I took his hand and shook it. If nothing else, he had a very strong grip. I figured it to be a pretty good indicator about the rest of him. "And if I don't want to talk with him?"

He shrugged. "It's not a kidnapping, what we're doing. It's just more efficient than asking."

Life is like that. It never asks your opinion on anything. I sat in silence for the rest of the trip. Angel seemed perfectly at ease with my stubbornness. He didn't even watch me. He stared entranced as the lights of the city slid by, as if he had never seen them before. I don't know why, but I envied him, a little. He seemed so satisfied with what he did. Even if what he did was kill.

* * *

><p>Some people scrape together enough money to buy a second home. Star Island is where the elite buy their second mansion. You know, to get away from it all. And to have somewhere to hang that other Van Gogh, since everyone knows it's gauche to keep two under the same roof.<p>

The two-story house we pulled in front of didn't have a protective fence surrounding it. There was something about the island that made fences unnecessary. Maybe there was a certain aura burning off the guard at the gatehouse that made the curious think twice about entering the island, even though the island was technically open to the public. Maybe the island just made people feel underdressed. I sure did, and I was still in the car.

The mansion itself couldn't have enclosed more than ten thousand square feet of living space, if that much. It was tastefully lit with warm but dim garden lights. The building's security cameras were modern and small and unobtrusively positioned in the shadows to avoid marring the house's charm. This was the first time I had seen any of these houses from this side. All of the homes on the island were water-front, and I had always only looked at them before from my boat. I was pretty sure that this house had a fancy pool in the back, and an even fancier garden. But then again, so did all the other houses.

A row of cars were parked to one side of the mansion. Even at this time of night, most of the windows were lit. I got the feeling that this was a house that never slept. We got out at the front entrance.

A butler opened the door for us before anyone could ring the doorbell, and Angel led me to a well-appointed sitting room that must have doubled as a waiting room. It was comfortable and welcoming, but also somehow businesslike at the same time. Before I could think about helping myself to a cup of coffee, the door to an office on the far side of the room opened, and Jay Evans stepped out, scowling to himself. When he saw me, he stopped in his tracks. And then he scowled even harder.

"Asshole," he gritted his teeth at me. "You cost me my award fee."

I just shrugged. It wasn't my problem. And his people had hit me.

He stomped past me, purposefully brushing his shoulder against mine. As if I were really to blame for his screw-up. Right now I was figuring that I had enough problems of my own without shouldering some other dude's.

Angel took me by the arm and led me in.

The man behind the mahogany desk looked up from some paperwork. He had short, straight, jet black hair with a bit of grey, and dark eyes that soaked in the world and categorized it.

"Thank you, Mister Lopez. Please wait outside for a few more moments, if you could."

Angel gave me a last look over, pointed a commanding finger in the direction of a comfortable-looking red leather chair, and quietly closed the solid oak door behind him.

"How do you prefer I call you," the man behind the desk asked, "Xao Yin or Dorje Gyaltso Saga?"

_Damn_, I thought. He even pronounced my name _perfectly_. He could literally give my name to a demon, and give it free access to me, if he knew what he was doing. I got the sudden feeling that he did. He must have had some incredible information sources, whoever this guy was.

I swallowed. "Call me George," I said.

"Ah. That name was also in our files. Would that be an alias or a nickname?"

"Does it matter?" I said, shrugging. "It's just something to call me."

"An interesting response for a wizard."

"People keep telling me that." I plopped into the leather chair. I was sleepy and figured I might as well make myself comfortable.

"I see. Allow me to congratulate your team on a well-played confidence game. You were an effective shill, by the accounts provided to me." He placed my Chinese passport and cell phone on the table. "I believe these are yours. Permit me to return them to you. In every respect, these articles appear to be genuine. In theory, I should have been fooled by them. However, your superiors may not be aware that I have access to the Chinese Department of State computer records. Your passport number was not listed. I took the liberty of adding it in to their system, gratis. It's the least I could do for the inconvenience Mister Evans caused you."

Like I said, this cat was plugged in.

"Guess it was stupid, showing up at a party after one of us was dead."

"I assume you were invited. Which only proves that your employer has grossly underestimated my data collection techniques."

"So you work for the Pleiades Public Relations firm?" I asked.

"Not precisely," he smiled thinly. "Pleiades Public Relations works for me. I am their primary financial stakeholder. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is John Marcone."

"Never heard of you."

"Yes, you remind me of another wizard I know, one who lives in Chicago, where I conduct most of my business. He is also adept at maximizing the awkwardness of a conversation."

"Can't help it," I said. "It's not my fault I don't know who you are. Which reminds me, if you're this high-muckety dude, what are you doing talking with me? Don't you have employees for sorting out the peasants?"

"Absolutely. But as a member of your specialized community, you enjoy a certain station that requires my personal attention. At least initially."

"I don't remember admitting to you that I am a member of any kind of special community, as you put it."

"Not necessary," he answered, waving his hand. "I am already satisfied with regard to the facts. You must understand, Mister Saga, that I have very diverse business interests, some of which extend into other, far-flung locations, shall we say? As a consequence, I am compelled to keep extensive portfolios on many normally obscure groups, such as the White Council, the Red Court, the Seelie Court, and so forth. Some of these groups do business with me. Some compete against me. Most do both.

"But to answer your question more directly, it is only by chance that I have had the opportunity to meet with you in person. I could hardly have flown you to Chicago to meet with me without your associates taking notice, but happily I was already in Miami conducting other business with certain parties from South and Central America."

"Drugs," I said.

"Chemical supplies," he corrected.

_Crap_, I thought. _How do I get mixed in with these hosers, anyway? All I ever wanted to do was put on a play for charity and forget the rest of this crappy planet._

"So now that you've met me, what do you want with me?"

"Would you care for something to drink? A cigarette? No? It's simple, Mister Saga. I wanted to introduce myself and my team to you. Rarely does anyone work for a single public relations firm for an entire lifetime, although I must admit that Nawang's central circle has proven to be remarkably close-knit. At some point, you may become dissatisfied with your employer. I am simply here to remind you that you have other options. I have reviewed your work from last night, and I am already satisfied about your qualifications."

"So, you went to all this trouble to shake hands with me and offer me a job?"

"As I have indicated, I am perhaps more interested with your wizarding background than your acting skills. Having you on board could greatly simplify the negotiations that I routinely conduct with my otherworldly trading partners."

"I'll bet," I muttered.

"I won't expect an immediate response from you. But do think about it. There are ways that we could both benefit from such a relationship. And certainly it would be a coup merely to pull you away from Nawang's mysterious little circle."

"Hmph," I muttered again.

"He is a wizard himself, isn't he?" Marcone asked in an offhand way.

"I signed a non-disclosure agreement," I said.

"Only the White Council has never heard of him," Marcone ignored me. "Odd, isn't it? But it might explain some of his firm's more elaborate successes, recently."

"If you say so," I shrugged. "I've only worked for him for a day or two."

Marcone stood. I guess the conversation was over. It wasn't much of one, if you asked me. Maybe he just wanted to scope me out.

"Your car is out front," he said. "Angel filled the tank and washed it."

I quietly wondered how my car would react to a tankful of actual gasoline. I was surprised it hadn't blown up on him on the way to Marcone's mansion.

"Thanks for the gas," I said. "No offense, but I doubt that we'll meet again. My plan is to drop out of the PR business and work on my boat. The firm was never more than a side job."

An odd glance of incredulity seemed to cross Marcone's face, which he immediately smoothed over with practiced nonchalance. "Ah. Knowing what I do of your employer, and knowing what I do now about you in particular, I very much doubt that will be case if you remain under him for much longer."

"Believe me," I said. "I know all about heavy-handed recruiting. Been there, done that. I've developed an immunity."

Marcone just gave me a second look that said he would have felt sorry for me if only he had the capacity to feel sorry for anyone.

As I walked back to my car, Angel tossed me the keys. "Good luck to you," he said. "No hard feelings?"

"There's gotta be an easier way to mooch a tank of gas off of a millionaire," I said.

"Not with my millionaire," he grinned. "You got off easy."

The thing is, I didn't think for a minute that I had.

* * *

><p>There's a reason I live on a boat. For one thing, I happen to like boats, especially sailboats. I like it that human beings can harness the simple elements like water and wind to let them move us around the world, like—like magic. Which is ironic, because water breaks a wizard's connection to the earth, from which we draw most of our power. If you're out on a boat, you have to draw your power over the top of the water from the nearest land source, which could conceivably be pretty far away.<p>

It stands to reason that wizards aren't supposed to like boats. Obviously a proper wizard would never live on one willingly. And that's the second reason a moored boat looks pretty attractive to me. I don't want other wizards from the Council running into me by accident. Or worse, on purpose. If any of them are looking for me, I'd just as soon have them looking somewhere else than where I am.

I can still do magic out on the water. It's just tiring, and I don't get much from all the effort. But I know that I'm a weak wizard, and I frankly need the exercise.

My sailboat is a 1971 twenty-seven foot Coronado diesel. Which means that, in small boat years, my home is about a million years old. And worth about ten dollars per foot.

But she's my home. I keep her moored out in the water at the sailing club near the Playhouse. She has an eighteen-horsepower motor and can do six knots after I've pumped the bilge for an hour. I've got a windmill that charges a small pack of batteries for the lights and tiny fridge, and an alcohol stove with two burners.

What I didn't have on my boat was a selkie. It was four in the morning, and she was gone. Which meant that she could have been anywhere in the city, doing whatever it was that selkies do.

What's more, I couldn't find Jeeves, either, and he _never_ left without me.

I hunted around the cabin and found her paper grocery bag tucked into an eye-level cabinet. The skin was inside, still warm. Which meant that at least she hadn't gone for the long swim back to Scotland on her own, and would eventually have to come back. I sighed. Wherever she was, the chances were good that she was making mischief with someone.

A half-moon reflected off the choppy water as I looked out into the bay. That's when I heard the music coming from the sailing club building. At four in the morning, on a Wednesday. Even for the Grove, that was pretty unusual. I had blown right by the building on the way to my boat, and Stanley the ferryman hadn't said anything to me about it. But then again, he's as old as dirt.

I pulled out my horn and blew upon it. Stanley came in his little flat-boat, glaring at me. "Shouldn't you be getting ready for work tomorrow?" He asked irascibly. "Don't any of you kids have steady jobs any more?"

"What's going on at the club?" I pointed back at the building.

He made a face. "People who should know better making damned fools of themselves, that's what's going on. You're welcome to join them. Wouldn't surprise me, anyway."

"Yeah, but what is it? A party?"

"Hell if I know. All of a sudden all the men decided they wanted to have a big thingie, with music and what-not. And all of them with jobs in the morning to go to. And me stuck down below because I have a post to keep, goddammit."

Bingo, I thought. She sure didn't have to go far to make trouble.

"Okay," I said. "I'm going to head over there, and two of us will need a ride back."

"Yech. At some point kid, the free rides end. You keep coming and going all night, and I'm going to ask that you get your own rowboat. Kids like you need the workout, anyhow."

"Thanks, Stanley."

"Yrgh, get in."

Back at the dock, I clambered onto dry land again and headed upstairs. The building has a lower level with showers and storage and a bit of office space, while the upper level has a large open room with a big adjoining outdoor balcony, which is used for parties, functions, and sometimes dinners for the residents.

Inside, the open room was a madhouse of dancing and raucousness. To be specific, there were about twenty raucous men, and a single dancing lady. The men were drunk. All of them were vying for Ava's eye with loud words and antics, but she didn't seem to give any one of them special attention. She just went from one guy to another, chatting, laughing, applauding them.

The thing was, I knew almost all of these guys. Some of them were friends of mine. And here they were, looking like a bad interpretation of _Midsummer Night's Dream_.

That's when I looked down at the floor. There was Jeeves, out on the floor, carousing with everyone else. He wasn't drunk on beer or wine. But he was drunk on Ava. He had been such a disciplined butler for me. Maybe he deserved to have one night off after two and a half decades of service to me and my family. Maybe he deserved to be seen by mortal men for once. But the question that ran through my mind was, was all this really his choice, or was it hers?

I stepped forward through the throng, sometimes elbowing my way past my friends to get to Ava.

"George, it's yourself!" she called out happily when she saw me coming. "Look, we're having a party! I haven't had this much fun in years! Come and dance with us!"

"Ava," I said, "we have to go back to the boat and talk."

"No!" she pouted childishly. "I don't want the night to end yet!"

"Some of these men are married, Ava. You realize that, right?"

"But we aren't doing anything _bad_. We're just talking and having fun. Can't you live for once? What's the harm in letting oneself go a little?"

"Who's the policeman over there?" I pointed at a cop who was telling jokes with a small group of guys in one corner of the room.

"Oh, him. Someone's wife wanted to know where her husband was, so he was sent over, and we got to talking, and…George, I can't help it! I just want people to have a good time, while they can. Because once it's over…you understand, don't you?"

I stared at her, trying to be angry. She was like a hurricane. She just plowed into people's lives. Still, you can't blame the hurricane for the destruction it causes. Because that's just its nature. But you can fear it. You can run from it.

"I found Elliot," I said. "I'm off the hook, Ava, whether you want to talk to me now, or not. I'm going back to the boat. If you want to follow me, you can."

She turned pale for a second. "You found him—"

I put my hand out to Jeeves, who at first was reluctant to come to me, but I was in no mood to have my will tested. He climbed up my arm and sat on my right shoulder.

I walked out without another word.

Behind me, I heard the men suddenly start to complain. Ava was following me down the stairs, and they were obediently following her. I felt ridiculous, for myself and for them.

"Ava," I turned back towards her. I flicked my eyes back at the crowd behind her. "We can't all fit on the boat."

She frowned sorrowfully and crossed her arms. "I'm sorry, gentlemen. I have to go now. May I meet you again tomorrow night? You were all such fun!"

"Hey!" one of the guys shouted at me. "What you do think you're doing, breaking up the party? Who gives you the right to hop in and take away our lady? What makes you think you're so special, huh?"

Ava walked over to him, touched him, whispered something soothing in his ear. He seemed to shudder, and he closed his eyes with pleasure.

"Fine?" she asked him.

"Okay," he whispered.

Stanley puttered us back to my sailboat. He stared at Ava with suspicion the whole way. When we got back to the boat, he held me back to let her board first.

"Listen to me, sonny," he said with a serious tone, "I've seen a lot of gals in my lifetime. And if ever I've seen a femme fatale, there's one right there on your boat. It's the ones who don't know they are, are the most dangerous. You just mind yourself, kid, you listen to me. She's a snake and she don't even realize it. I've seen it all before, and it weren't pretty. People get killed over a woman like that."

"I know it," I said, looking back at the boat in the darkness.

"Fair enough," he said. "Off you go, sonny."

I climbed up onto my boat with Jeeves.

If you were wondering the name of my sailboat, on the stern was carefully painted: "CALL FOR ASSISTANCE." Like my shirt, it was also written upside down. Must be a theme, or something.

Now you know the secret of wizards. Half the job involves being prepared for the worst. We do this because when the worst comes, it's usually our own damned fault.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

I woke up with the cold barrel of a submachine gun pressed against the bottom of my nose. The part of my brain that cares about my survival overrode the part of my brain that wanted to sneeze.

"Hi," I said to the butch-looking woman holding the gun. "The wallet's in my pants' pocket."

"Get up slowly," she ordered.

"What's with all the guns?" I asked.

"Who was the chick?" she ignored my question.

"Was?"

"She dove over the side of your boat as we came up. We'll find her eventually, so you may as well tell us."

I actually laughed. "No, you won't. She's a professional diver. She's long gone by now. I wonder why she didn't wake me."

"Maybe you're a lousy lover," she grabbed me by the arm with an unexpectedly iron grip and pushed me towards the aft companionway.

"And how," I murmured. I had given Ava my bed and slept on the so-called sofa. Never try to sleep on a curved sofa. Everything's fine until you try to roll over. "Any chance I can put on some decent clothes?"

"No. You can get dressed in the car. Move it."

I climbed up the staircase to the deck and looked around. A half-cup of tea and an old robe of mine was still laying on the seat by the wheel. I dunked my finger in the tea. It was still warm. She must have been sitting out on the deck, warming up under the morning sun, when the anger-management drop-out came to visit my boat.

"You know, technically this is piracy," I said in as friendly a voice as I could muster, while I grabbed the robe and wrapped it around me.

"Really?" the lady brightened. "I'll add it to my list. Get in the zodiac."

Two other men were in the rubber craft below. One of them held out a submachine gun identical to the butch lady's. The other guy was piloting.

"See her?" the woman asked the others.

"No," the pilot made a face. "Too many sailboats moored here. We could spend all morning searching them."

"Doesn't matter," the woman said. "She collateral, anyway."

The driver revved the engine and shot us away from my sailboat. But instead of heading straight towards the shore, where the sailing club building was, we headed northeast, right past the Miami police department and Miami city hall, with quasi-legal guns fully drawn and visible to the world. We went around the Dinner Key marina, which is several times the size of my little sailing club, shot past Vizcaya, and landed at Alice Wainwright Park. I used to practice mock swordfighting with the Chessmen for the Renaissance Guild here. But I stopped coming after my father disappeared. It just wasn't the same, any more, when things got real.

Maybe I had been a wuss for running away from the White Council, I thought to myself. Maybe I was supposed to grow up, and didn't. I silently wondered whether I had let my parents down all these years.

A white SUV was parked right at the waterside. People weren't supposed to park there, but I had already figured out that these people weren't overly hung-up about rules. As I hopped out of the zodiac and onto land, I saw that the water was full of Portuguese Men-of-War. Stinging tendrils trailed out from their alien, blue air-sacs.

When we were all in the car, I asked, "So, where to?"

"Work," the butch woman said.

"Yours, or mine?"

She handed me a pair of my jeans and a black tee-shirt of mine that read: "FORGIVE MY POLITENESS. I'M NOT MYSELF TODAY."

"Ours," she answered.

* * *

><p>The door to the same conference room where I had first processed into the Yargro Publicity Services firm unlocked and opened. I had been thrown in there by my three escorts at least a couple of hours earlier, where I had been left alone to stew.<p>

Isaac Wright stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. He smiled cruelly when he saw me.

"You know," I said, "I'm starting to dislike working for you guys."

"Oh, you haven't seen the half of it," he smiled even more broadly, letting me get a peek at his fangs. "But you're about to. By the way, I like your shirt. It's oh-so-appropriate."

"Go to hell," I said. It seemed kind of lame, saying that to a vampire, but it was the first response I could think of.

"I had a nice breakfast, this morning," he leaned in to me. "So I could be good and strong for you today."

"Buddha's britches, is that why your breath smells so fishy?" I drawled.

He grabbed me by the neck like I was a toy doll, plucking me up from the chair I had been sitting in. He gave me a little shake, which about whipped my head off.

"Be a nice boy. You'll see why. We're all set for you, now. Oh, the pleasure of finally putting you in your little veal crate, where you always belonged."

"Fat chance," I said. They were empty words, and we both knew it.

He pulled me out of the room by the neck like I was some kind of pet who had gotten loose. I could feel each one of his iron fingers, digging into my flesh. Just a little squeeze from him, and I'd be gone from the Earth. Now I really was beginning to understand what my dad had against vampires, Uncle Senge excepted. Maybe I was beginning to understand what the White Council had against them.

He dragged me to the stairwell and started to pull me up. If my feet climbed too slowly, he just dragged me. He only had to do that once. I kept my feet moving as fast as they could after that, I didn't care how winded I got. We went past the second floor, and headed for the third floor. The floor that all employees except the most trusted were absolutely forbidden from entering, ever.

Mister Wright put his thumb up to a fingerprint reader, and the door clicked, opening outwards on its own. He pulled me into a hallway that ran continuously for the length of the building.

Half of the ceiling tiles in the hall were gone. Loose wires and flexible pipes hung down through the gaps. Only a couple of fluorescent lights illuminated the long hallway. Clumps of blue fibers were scattered all over the floor. It might have been asbestos. I instinctively held my hand up to my face.

The doors that peppered the hallway were made of metal, and each had a little square window of glass reinforced with crosshatched wires. These were probably the original office doors from the days when this had been a long distance switching office. Everything I saw was probably original.

Isaac pulled me down the hallway, walking at a brisk pace.

About halfway down, we stopped at a door. A light was coming through the window, the first door I had seen that was lit from behind. He took me by the back of the neck and pressed my face painfully up to the glass.

"Take a good look, stupid," he said. "Take a look at your friends."

The room behind the window had been set up like an operating theater, with two stainless steel operating tables. An umbrella of halogen lights cast an antiseptic glow on the center of the room. On the near table lay Emma upon her back, and on the far table lay Calvin. They were both naked. Their eyes were wide open, but unblinking and unseeing. Xavier stood behind Emma's table, wearing surgical scrubs, a cloth mask over his nose and mouth, and clear latex gloves on his hands. Helena was standing behind Calvin's table, dressed the same way.

Xavier glanced at me through the window and casually held his hand over Emma's right breast, waving it back and forth in the air. Emma gasped in pleasure, and her back arched up, raising her chest to meet his hand. She moaned as she touched his gloved fingers.

"No!" I screamed in fury. I rammed my body up against the metal door. "Wake up! Emma, wake up!" Bile burst involuntarily out of my mouth.

Isaac's laughter reached me, enraging me even more. "They can't hear you," he giggled. "They belong to the night, now."

"Emma!" I screeched. The burnt-out fluorescent lights in the hallway suddenly blazed. The surgical lights strobed like a roomful of flashbulbs. The two vampires behind the door quickly held their hands to their eyes. Spots danced and twirled in front of me.

Isaac threw me back against the far wall. He hissed at me angrily. "It's time for you to grow up and serve us. Bend your knee, little wizard. Bend it for daddy."

I don't know where it came from, but power surged through me. I could feel it coming up through the floor, through the ground, from a hidden place deep beneath the earth, where magic slept and had fitful dreams. I felt it as I had never sensed it before, spread out across the city like a fine web, touching everything. I sat upon its humming threads like a tiny spider, feeling every vibration that throbbed and pulsed.

A word bubbled up to my mouth with the power. "_Nyima_," I snarled, holding my hand out toward Isaac. His spotless white suit burst into a conflagration of red and yellow flames. His body burned of its own accord.

"Damn you!" I cried out, pouring it on.

He let out a piercing howl.

The power quickly ran out of me. I just didn't have much of a capacitor inside of me. I dropped my arm, suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of emptiness.

The door opened and the other two vampires leapt towards me. Helena grasped me by my right shoulder and pushed me into the concrete wall. I heard a crunching noise and I was pretty sure it was the sound of my arm being dislocated. Her fingertips felt as cold as titanium spikes through the thin layer of my shirt.

"Stop the fire," she growled, "or I tear you to pieces."

I looked at her blankly. I had never handled that much power before. The effort had surprised and bewildered me. But I had shot my wad. I couldn't have lit a candle at three paces, now. I tried to answer her, but I was suddenly too tired. My eyes fluttered.

Isaac had finished tearing off the remains of his smoldering clothes. He looked like a mess. Red and white blisters covered much of his body. His beautiful blond hair was smoking, and had dark, ashen patches near his shoulders. One of his eyebrows was missing.

It goes without saying that he was pissed.

I managed a bitter smile. Small victories are better than none. And at least I distracted them from Emma and Calvin for a few more minutes.

"Pathetic," Helena said. "I thought Isaac said you were a wizard. But you're just a babe in the cradle. I don't know why we are bothering with you."

"Bothering with what?" I managed to ask.

"Hiring you," she said.

Isaac slid up to me and grabbed me by my dislocated shoulder. I couldn't fight him. I didn't even call out in pain.

"Remember," he said. "Remember that Xavier and Helena are here with your co-workers. Remember what they can do to them. What they were _made_ to do to them." He shook me viciously. "Remember!"

"I remember," I said, thickly.

"And if you don't obey, you know what will happen to them. What should have happened to them. Remember!"

"You're going to do it, anyway," I said.

He suddenly gave me a big hug, leaned his head against mine, almost lovingly. Except I could feel more bones popping. "No, no, no, we're not that petty. This is much bigger than that. We don't care about the small fish, do we? We care about you, George. We want you to be happy."

"Then let them go," I quietly insisted.

"In the fullness of time. Just you remember that they are here. And so are we."

He took me by his blistered hand, and—unashamed of his nakedness—pulled me further down the hallway, into the deepening gloom. I didn't fight him.

I had landed one good punch.

But I had lost.

A dim light flickered through the window of the last door in the hallway. Isaac opened it, and cold air poured out into the hallway, swirling around us like a miniature storm, like a thing alive with many fingers. I smelled the strong scent of leather. He roughly shoved me inside and slammed the door shut behind me. It clanged like a great gong, vibrating for a long time.

I found myself in a modern-looking office, except that the only light came from a double-row of pencil-thin black candles lining the right hand wall in a long, narrow shelf. The other walls consisted of bookcases that ran from floor to ceiling. Every inch of shelf space was occupied by leather books of all sizes and shapes, some with glittering gold lettering, some with black. Volume after volume after volume.

Over the candles hung a pair of diplomas from Yale University for a guy named Matthew Bouknight. The second diploma said that he had earned a _Legum Magister_ in commercial law.

In the middle of the room hunched a heavy-looking desk made of African Sapele. The minerals in the wood seemed to flow and glisten in the leaping light of the candles. The desk's claw feet were resting on the carved likenesses of human skulls. But the skulls didn't bother me, if that's what they were supposed to do. An experienced Buddhist can do skulls all day long.

There wasn't much on the table. A closed laptop computer, very slim. An ornate wooden box with a recessed lock, varnished almost to black. An LCD desktop computer monitor. A mechanical kitchen timer.

My eyes kept drifting back to the locked box. Something about it vaguely upset me. Something inside of it.

I shivered.

A few minutes later, the metal door opened behind me, and a rail-thin man stepped through. His straight, inky-black hair was slicked straight back with gel. He wore an expensive dark-blue micro-striped suit, a blood-red silk tie, and shiny black leather shoes. He had a gold ring on his right pinky bearing a design that was too small for me to see. And he wore mirrored designer sunglasses, the candles shimmering in them.

He radiated Power like a freight train engine radiates noise.

Then he shut the door behind him, looking me over, I guessed. With his lanky legs, he briskly stepped over to the desk—his desk—and set a razor-thin briefcase down on top of it.

"Mister Saga?" he said to me.

I nodded.

"Have a seat, if that suits you." He took off his sunglasses and dropped them carefully into a drawer. Our eyes almost met, and then I understood. Buddha help me, I understood.

His eyes had no iris at all. They had just a white cornea and pinprick black pupils that didn't enlarge, even in the gloom of the office. Eyes like a praying mantis.

I knew what those eyes meant. I know what kind of self-made monster he was. I had been warned about his kind as a child. But only when I was very bad. I was told what finally happens to persistently naughty children. I was told who they were sent to, when they couldn't be punished by anyone else. And Buddha help me, he was actually real.

You see, people joke a lot about lawyers. There's the jokes about how they all sell their souls to the Devil. But they're just jokes, right? None of that _really_ happens, right? Only, sometimes it does. Not exactly the way people imagine it. But close enough that it doesn't matter.

"You're—you're a Devil's Advocate," I rasped.

He smiled at me, and I wished that he hadn't. "Very good," he said. "I was told that you would be an informed individual."

A Devil's Advocate is a mortal lawyer who has been supernaturally enhanced by a top-tier demon as a part of an unholy mutual agreement. What they actually agree upon is a personal thing between them, but no demon is going to hand over that much power to a mortal unless it gets something special in return. My uncle told me once that it wouldn't surprise him if the price really turned out to be the bargainer's immortal soul. I couldn't in a million years imagine someone making that kind of deal for mere power, but it takes all kinds.

Devil's Advocates are masters of the domain of contracts. They can speed-read a mortal contract and understand every nuance of it, every potential loophole. They know the court cases in which similar contracts were challenged, and on what basis. They know if a contract is genuine, or forged. They know every tricky legal phrase that has ever been tried—in any written language.

They are hired by both mortals and denizens of Nevernever to perform a single unique service: to negotiate and write supernatural ironclad Contracts. Contracts that _can't_ be broken, except maybe by the elite of magic-using creatures—the Faerie Queens, the Merlin, dragons, maybe just a handful of others. Even demons can't break them, and they supply the power to make them in the first place.

My gut knotted itself. I sat down in the chair, feeling as light headed as I had the first time I had sat in my Principal's office in elementary school.

"Let me begin by stipulating some ground rules," he said in a supremely calm voice. He rotated the LCD monitor on his desk around to face me, and turned it on. When it blinked to life, it displayed the feed from a closed-circuit video camera inside Calvin and Emma's room. The room where probably they were going to die. Helena was licking the palm of Calvin's hand, put his finger into her mouth and sucked on it. There was no sound, but Calvin laughed with pleasure, his body flaccidly lying on the cold metal table. But I knew that with each stroke of her tongue, she was digesting a little of his life force, like a starfish wrapping around and digesting a clam.

It killed me to see it.

The lawyer picked up the kitchen timer and twisted the dial to sixty minutes. It started ticking loudly. He set it down in front of the monitor, where I could see it clearly. "The first and foremost rule," he said, "is that our negotiations must be successfully concluded before this timer stops. If we do not reach a formal agreement by that point, Lama Nawang has stipulated that your confederates, Mister Calvin Holifield and Miz Emma Felix, shall be fed to the white court vampires in the firm's employ."

"And I guess I will be fed to them, too?"

He opened a second drawer in his desk and pulled out a submachine gun, which he dropped onto the table with a heavy thunk. It was just lying there, but the muzzle was pointed at me. Kinetic death.

He coughed into his fist politely. "I must also caution you not to attempt to interfere with the progress of the timer, magically or otherwise. I will certainly notice, and it will result in the premature conclusion of our discussion."

"Has anyone ever tried?" I asked.

"Some tried. None lived." His eyes flitted down to the gun meaningfully.

"You're going to make me sign a Contract. With Nawang," I stated flatly.

He shook his head. "I won't _make_ you. You must sign it voluntarily. I cannot magically compel you to sign, for example, or the magic of the Contract does not work. None of the laws of the White Council will specifically be broken during our conversation. You might be surprised to learn that no Warden has ever been sent against a lawyer in my field of specialization. In fact, the White Council employs us from time to time, as do many other parties."

My anger must have showed. I pointed at the monitor, and the gun. "You don't call these things compelling? Whatever happened to signing a contract under duress, and all that?"

"Common questions. The answer to your first question is an emphatic no, they are not. They are strong arguments, but in the end, the decision is yours. You are free to sign, or not sign. You have the right to read the Contract. You have the right to negotiate minor language changes to the Contract with me, provided the substance and intent of the contract are not subverted. You have the right to terminate the negotiation early.

"As for your second question, you must understand that this is not a legal contract, per se, in that it is not enforced by a legal authority. It is instead a magical contract. It enforces itself. It constitutes its own supreme authority, and embodies its own law. Once you sign it, you can never appeal it, although it can be professionally amended if all parties agree to the exact language. It's these qualities of our contracts that make them so valuable to our clients."

"What happens if I break it?"

"Simply speaking, you don't. You will know where your boundaries are, and you will simply be unable to step beyond them."

"That's magical compulsion. It breaks the fourth law of magic. _Thou shalt not enthrall another._"

He smiled again. "Not when you voluntarily sign the contract with your own hand. Then they become self-imposed limits. It's perfectly legal, and believe me, I'm in a position to know."

What galled me was my sudden understanding of the reason the White Council had never gone after these Devil's Advocate assholes. It wasn't because they were so clever at dancing around the Seven Laws of Magic, although admittedly a Devil's Advocate knew exactly how to drive straight through the loopholes in our laws. No, the Council had never hunted these bastards' heads because they were useful to the Council. They gave the Council yet one more way to wink at their own dogma. It made me ill. I should have known better.

"By the way, I didn't introduce myself. George Saga," I said, holding out my left hand in lieu of retching on his nice desk.

"Matthew Bouknight. Forgive me if I don't shake your hand. I don't want to create the premature implication of an agreement."

He pulled a tiny skeleton key out of the inside pocket of his jacket and twisted it in the lock of the wooden box on his desk. He looked at me as he opened the box. A strange odor emanated from inside. The faint odor of decay, like a rat had died in the box, but long ago.

"I've taken the liberty," he said as he reached into the box and pulled out a stack of what looked like sheets of thick, tan paper, "of writing out the Contract body last night, so there will be no need to start from scratch today."

"But I get to read it? It's, uh, in English, right?"

"As I said, it's your right to read it, provided you mind the little timer, which I see is down to fifty-six minutes. The contract is not in English. Since this is a contract between you, as the employee, and Lama Nawang, as employer, considering your common profession, it seemed appropriate to use Latin."

Latin is the universal language of wizards of the White Council. But neither Nawang nor I had ever actually joined the White Council. I got the feeling that Bouknight was really just having his private little joke on us both.

He smiled slyly, and slid the pages across the desk.

"I can't pick them up," I said. "My arm."

"Very well, let me look at it." He walked briskly around the desk. "Which arm?"

"The right."

He stepped uncomfortably close to me, touched me with frigid fingers. "It's just dislocated," he murmured.

"It's the arm I sign with."

"You _could_ sign with your left hand. Still, I think you can fix the damage. I don't see any reason to delay the proceedings over it."

"Wait," I said. "You want _me_ to fix it?"

"It's merely dislocated," he said. "Don't be such a coward about it."

"First of all, I wouldn't even know how to fix it. Second—I want a goddam doctor to look at it!"

Bouknight hissed in exasperation. He opened up the wooden box all the way and pulled out a clean sheet of the Contract paper. He spread it out on the table carefully and plucked an odd-looking black quill from his briefcase. After a moment of thought, he wrote a few words on the paper and pushed it to the edge of the desk where I could see it.

"Pick it up," he said.

The paper was warm to the touch. It made my fingers tingle, and reminded me somehow of Ava's seal skin. I ran my fingers back and forth across it.

"This is vellum, not paper," I said.

"Of a kind. The magic is—demanding."

I stopped rubbing the vellum, looked down at it more closely. "Oh," I whispered. "Oh, no. Not lamb vellum. This—this is human skin."

"It's best for holding the magic. Sheep skin just doesn't pack the same energy return."

I wondered who the poor bastard was whose skin I was holding. Did he or she give it up unwillingly? I wasn't going to ask. I was simply too cowardly to actually know. But I quietly added it to this asshole's tab. He was going to pay. Somehow.

Silently asking the page for forgiveness, I lifted it up to read.

It said: "_I, Dorje Gyaltso Saga, agree to remedy my dislocated right shoulder immediately upon the execution of this Contract. Witnessed by Matthew Bouknight._"

I looked at him, nonplussed. "You're wacko," I said.

"Sign it," he replied. "Use your left hand, it will be good enough for this."

"What good is that going to do?"

"Sign it, and you'll see."

I picked up his offered quill, leaned over the desk, and signed my full name to the paper. It was a terrible, shaky signature. But it was mine.

The quill dropped out of my hand of its own accord. Roaring fire poured through me, boiled me from the inside. The words on the paper leapt up and wrapped around my face. They injected themselves into me, grafting themselves onto me. I felt the essence of who I was shift subtly. I wasn't George Saga any more, exactly. I felt like my real self had gone away, and been replaced by an imperfect copy.

And then the real pain hit me. My right arm—of its own volition—began to seat itself back into its socket. I had no warning, nothing to kill the pain, and I had no control over my body. It was repairing itself, yes, but without any consideration to the rest of my well-being. My body was tied to the letter of the law, and was following it precisely, like a computer program. The spirit of the law could go to hell, as far as the one-sentence Contract was concerned. My screams of agony echoed through the office.

The agony passed. I started to breathe again. Droplets of steaming sweat dribbled down my forehead. My right arm felt like total crap. I was afraid to try to raise it, even though I knew with one hundred percent certainty that it would work perfectly again. And I should know. I was the one who had repaired it.

"Buddha's piss," I whispered.

"Now you understand what a Contract truly is," he said, almost with awe at his own work.

"I hope you don't bill people for your brand of health care," I groaned feebly.

"Not to worry. It's all going on Nawang's invoice. Even though I am a full partner at my legal firm, he is essentially my sole employer. He keeps me very, very busy, with cases like yours.

"But I fear you are forgetting the timer."

No, I hadn't forgotten it. It was always there, ticking away. Just as the vampires were always there, in the room with my troupe.

I couldn't think of anything else to delay the inevitable.

With icy dread like I had never known before, I picked up the pages of the real Contract, knowing now what it was. Knowing viscerally and completely what absolute power it would have over me.

My stomach knotted into its own singularity, I began to read through the pages.

The beautiful thing about Latin is the way time can fluidly flex within it. Latin can treat time the way Picasso treated space, looking at it from all sides at once. In Latin, you can say, "Octavius shall have been even more famished by dinnertime if he will have forgotten to pack his lunch," and not feel the slightest tinge of giddiness.

It's the perfect language for crafting Zen-like inscrutable stanzas. No wonder wizards, lawyers, and high priests prefer it over other languages. Not that I think English is any more understandable, and it's my native tongue.

It took me about a half and hour to read through the thirty pages, and even then I wasn't clear on a lot of what it said.

But I was clear on one thing—if I signed it, I would agree to be Nawang's Boy. For the rest of my life.

The contract was iron-clad. Bouknight must have thought of every possible way to subvert the Contract, and had inked in a clause to block each loophole. But in a way, it seemed like the very tightness of the Contract could work in my favor. It was so rigid in its control, I might be prevented from doing _anything_ for Nawang, even what he wanted me to do.

Maybe I could do something with that. I sure couldn't think of anything else in the next half-hour.

I looked back at the monitor. Emma and Calvin hadn't gone anywhere. The vampires hadn't gone anywhere. All my friends had was me, and my signature. And I was going to give it for them.

"First of all," I said to Bouknight, "we both know that the only thing that's motivating me to sign this is my desire to free my companions from the firm."

Bouknight nodded.

"But I don't see anything about that in this contract. I want some quid pro quo. I want it in here, iron clad, that Emma and Calvin will be released, unharmed and unmolested, if this Contract goes into effect."

Bouknight seemed to think about this for a few moments. "Done," he said. He took the papers from me, picked up his black quill, and began to write onto the last page of the Contract. As the ink settled in, the words seemed to shift around to make room for the new clause, as if the vellum were some kind of living word processor. Just when I thought the vellum couldn't get any creepier.

"Second," I said, "while I appreciate that you are offering me two weeks of vacation per year, I notice that the vacation is not made available to me until after my first year of service under this contract."

"Yes," the lawyer said.

"That's old school," I said. "Nobody does that any more. I want to accrue the vacation on a weekly basis, in hourly increments."

He frowned. "You are actually going to spend your remaining half-hour quibbling over details such as vacation? And you aren't even asking for additional vacation days?"

"No, I'm not asking for additional vacation. And now that we're talking about it, why did Nawang offer me any vacation at all?"

Bouknight shrugged. "I'm not privy to all of my employer's motivations. Perhaps he likes you?"

"Yeah," I said. "That must be it."

He shrugged again.

"Are you going to put it in?" I asked.

Looking at me a little critically, he crossed out some of the language in the pages, and penned in my request. The crossed out words disappeared, replaced with the new ones.

"Third, if I am going to work for Nawang long term, I can assume that at some point in my life, I'm going to be managing people. Would you agree with that?"

"I won't discount the possibility," he answered.

"If that's the case, then I'm going to be responsible for guiding junior employees in their careers. Yet the way this is worded, I would be severely limited in the kinds of ways I could interact with other employees."

"Those limits are a necessary precaution, to avoid certain obvious loopholes Contractors have attempted to exploit in the past."

"I understand," I said. "But I would like to at least be given the authority to consult with employees of the firm over their personal career goals."

Bouknight drummed his fingers on the desk, staring at me hard. He smelled a rat, I could tell. But he couldn't use magic to interrogate me. All he could do is write the Contract as best as he could. "Very well," he finally said, and I almost sighed.

"Fourth," I said, "I have a fundamental issue with this Contract."

"Hmm. Here it comes, at last."

"This Contract forbids me from having any contact at all with employees or representatives of organizations with whom our firm competes."

"Precisely," Bouknight nodded.

"But half the reason I was hired to work for this company was to do things like the reverse-swiftboat, where we engage the enemy directly, so to speak. But the way this is written, I won't be allowed to do that. The Contract will render me useless to the firm."

Bouknight pursed his lips. He opened his brief case and pulled out my HR file. After he read through it, he pursed his lips again. "This may have been an oversight," he said. "Excuse me one moment." He pulled a company-issued cell phone out of his pocket and hit the speed dial. He frowned. "Nawang, this is Bouknight. Can you call me as soon as possible? We have a question about employment intent on Saga's Contract."

He put the phone back into his pocket, and glared at me.

"Look, this is all you have to say," I sat back in the leather chair. "That I will engage the enemy to harass them, to deplete their resources, and to entangle them in worthless schemes."

The lawyer leaned back in his own chair as well, his steepled fingers pressed tightly against his lips. He glared at the kitchen timer. "Excuse me," he said icily as he pulled his phone back out. "Don't touch the gun. I'll know if you do." He left the office, slamming the door behind him.

The timer continued to roll down.

Xavier was running his fingers along the inside of Emma's bare thigh. He had taken his gloves off.

I sweated profusely, regardless of how icy the room was.

Five minutes later, Bouknight opened the door and came back in. His eyes slid across me and all around the room.

"Interesting," he said.

"What is?"

"You would have read that the Contract prevents you from committing suicide. This would have been your last opportunity to take the quick way out."

"But if I did that, you wouldn't have freed my companions. There's only one way I could guarantee that."

He sat back down in his chair, steepling his fingers again.

"Did you really intend to give me that chance?" I asked.

Bouknight picked up the gun, pointed it at me, and pulled the trigger.

The gun clicked.

Nothing came out.

"Buddha's 'nads, you really are a bastard," I growled.

"I have had a brief discussion with HR. They confirmed that you were initially brought in to perform direct engagement with Pleiades Public Relations. I am, however, unable to reach Lama Nawang, although I sense that he is nearby. In my discussion with him about you, we did not talk about your relationship with Pleiades. I have the sense that he may have other long term plans for you. It puts me in a bit of a quandary."

He pulled his quill out, flipped through the pages, and crossed out some of lines. He scribbled a little more in the margins, thinking carefully through each sentence.

Then he sat back, rereading his work. "I am going to permit you the freedom to engage with our firm's competitors and their representatives directly. However, there will be some caveats.

"First, you must report to Nawang or his designated proxy any contacts with said competitors or their representatives within twenty-four hours of the contact. The report must be detailed and accurate.

"Second, you are strictly forbidden from selling out to a competitor. The Contract already stipulates that you abide by our NDA, and that certainly applies to your interaction with competitors.

"And third, as the Contract already stipulates that you must obey all direct orders of Lama Nawang, regardless of their nature, he will be the final authority on decisions to initiate contact with representatives of our competitors. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I said. "I understand."

"Are you ready to sign?"

"Um, no, not exactly," I cringed a little, and shrugged.

"Let me rephrase. Are you _going_ to sign?"

"One last thing. It's tiny."

Bouknight tried not to blink.

"I want to add one week of seniority to my record with HR," I said firmly.

He put his quill down. "Why?" he asked.

"It's a matter of principle. I've already started work for the firm, and I deserve credit for it."

"I must say that your definition of _principle_ baffles me, Mister Saga."

"It comes down to this," I said. "If you people are going to be assholes, then I'm going to be one, too, for as long as that timer is running, even if I can only be one in small and petty ways."

"In which case, I must say no."

"I think you will say yes. Because by your twisted view of the universe, you think you have more to lose if I don't sign on time than I do. So go ahead, write it in, and I'll sign right now."

The sound of the candles flickering and the timer ticking filled the silence that hung between the two of us.

His eyes would have stabbed me if they could.

But in the end he wrote it in.

"Take off you shirt, if you would," he said to me.

"Why?" I said.

"So as not to destroy your property when you sign."

My brows furrowed, I took my tee shirt off and threw it to the floor.

Bouknight quietly and methodically picked up the Contract papers and pressed them into a neat pile. "I am signing my name," he said, "with power of attorney, on the behalf of Kalden Nawang, employer." With practiced care, he reversed and slid the stack across the desk. He said nothing else to me, and actually looked away.

My heart pounded loudly as I leaned forward.

There were so many things I had wanted to negotiate out of the Contract. I had wanted to stipulate that I would never be required to break the Laws of Magic. I had wanted it to say that I would never have to break secular law. I had wanted to add in that I would never break someone's heart. But it would have been pointless to demand those things. Bouknight would have simply refused, and then the timer would have run out.

"Goodbye, cruel world," I said.

"It only gets crueler," I almost thought I heard him whisper.

I picked up the pen, and noticed for the first time that while my arm cast a shadow across the paper from the candlelight, the quill did not.

The first stroke of the pen was the hardest. My hand resisted me, asked me to reconsider. But in the grand scheme of things, I never thought I was important. What was important was that I had gotten good people involved with bad, and it was my responsibility to fix that. No matter what.

And then, I was done. My signature was on the paper. For a short moment, the black ink seemed to float just above the skin, before it slowly sank down, like a ship lost in a stormy and frigid sea, merging with the ocean, becoming an inherent part of it.

This time the fire was much, much worse. I didn't just boil. I didn't merely burn. It was as if my body burst into a million trillion little dots of independent beings, blown apart by a fission reaction. I wasn't just hit by a nuclear bomb—I _was_ the bomb. Conflagration raged around me, through me, between the infinite aspects of me. And then some force caught all the free-falling bits of me and began to press me back together like particle-board, bit by painful bit, using unholy fire as glue.

Slowly, grindingly, reality began to assert itself. But I felt as if I wasn't quite a part of it, even if I could sense it around me. I was somewhere else, pressed against a glass, looking in. Or maybe, looking out. Maybe I was caught in a jar, running in circles, endlessly.

That's when I noticed that not all of the pain was gone. I could smell smoke coming from me, and my chest felt like I had just stumbled drunkenly into a campfire, falling down face first on top of it. I looked down. The shape of a black pig had been branded between my breasts. It was still smoking.

I tried to open my mouth to complain about it, but my mouth didn't open. I could only look at Bouknight, hoping he could read me through my eyes.

But he wasn't looking straight at me. He already knew how it would be for me. He'd been down this road so many times before.

I looked at the table. The sheets of the Contract were gone. I didn't know if they had disappeared as a part of the magic, or if Bouknight had taken them while I was being remade. Come to think of it, I couldn't remember what happened to the first Contract page, either.

I was forbidden from asking.

I was forbidden from a lot of things. I could see the narrow corridors where my mind allowed me to go. The rest of it was locked away, a part of me that I knew was there, but I couldn't remember exactly what it was like. I had been boiled down, like a rue, to the parts that Nawang needed, and nothing more.

Bouknight picked up his cell phone and speed dialed a number. "I was trying to reach you," he said. "Oh, right. It's done. I agreed to let the other two go. Yes, I assumed you would know. He's waiting for you, now."

The lawyer leaned towards me. "Let me direct your attention to the monitor. You will note that the room is now empty. Per our agreement, your compatriots are in the process of being cleaned up and released."

"Unmolested?" I managed to croak.

"Within certain parameters," he answered. "Yes, unmolested."

_Within parameters. _Yes, I understood. _That's the key_, the unbidden thought floated through me. _To—to something. Don't fight it. Flow with it. Roll with it. Bend. But—but, something. Something._

From behind the leather chair, I heard the metal door open. It was Nawang. I could feel him, as I could vaguely feel Bouknight. We were all tied together now, through the Contract. Because I wasn't the only one who had signed. We all three had, in a way. I had just borne the brunt of it, that's all.

He walked around the chair and faced me, looking me up and down critically. Making sure I wasn't damaged goods. The light from the flickering candles winked along his shaved crown, the way it had reflected off of Bouknight's sunglasses.

"I—I can call you a bastard," I said.

"There are things you can do, and then there are things you can do," he crossed his arms. "You are still answerable to the consequences of your actions."

"Bastard," I repeated, pushing the word out thickly. "What have you done to me?"

"There, now," Nawang said soothingly, "it's nothing personal. All my closest employees go through this ordeal. It lowers the firm's risk exposure, that's all."

"It makes me your—your—."

"Only if you choose to view it that way. You are an insider now. You have power and authority over those who are not. And more, you have the opportunity to earn the right to be my apprentice."

My brows narrowed. "You said I already had that right."

"A true apprentice understands that to serve a guru, it must be without reservation. It means sacrificing all that you have, and all that you are. It is a profoundly difficult yet equally unshackling calling. I have done it myself, twice, for two teachers. Now I have started you down the path of instruction. You must decide to go the rest of the way."

"I was still thinking about it. I hadn't made my decision. You took the choice away from me!"

"Truly? Think upon the difference between a free man and an enslaved one. Is the distinction only a self-imposed illusion? How much of your life has already been governed by others? You were sent to school by the state. You took out the garbage at the command of your parents. You were apprenticed to a man you called _Master_. In time, you might have found a job, where you would have spent the rest of your mortal days struggling to move paper from your in box to your out box, never quite finishing the task. Self-deception is ever the enemy, Cimba. But the hard lessons teach best. Reflect upon what you have learned about yourself today."

I reflected, all right. I wept like a lost child, right there in front of everyone. It was allowed.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

In spite of the early summer heat, I wore a heavy plain grey sweatshirt. I was irrationally worried that someone might see through a thinner shirt and notice the black brand on my chest.

I had gone back to my boat to get it and to take a shower on the way to my next assignment. Ava was there. Jeeves was not. Ava told me that Jeeves had simply stood up, packed his little backpack, and jumped off the side of my sailboat. I had never heard of him just running off alone, before. Maybe my Contract freed him from any further obligation to me. Maybe he just didn't want to be a part of what I had gotten into. I didn't know what to say. Losing him was like losing the clapper from my ritual bell. He had been just so indispensable for me, for pretty much my entire life.

I had tried to tell Ava what I could about Elliot, and indirectly, about myself, but only managed a few halting words in the end. I warned her she needed to get clear of Miami that day and hitch a ride back to Scotland any way she could. She just looked at me critically and suggested that I mind my own business. As I got dressed, I tried a couple of times again to persuade her, but she just crossed her arms and glared back at me. "I'll look after Calvin and Emma at the theater," she finally had offered. "There are things that I can do to soothe their hurt. You just do what you have to do." I hadn't told her exactly what had happened to them. I wasn't permitted. But somehow, she sensed the truth. I gave her a kiss on the top of her head, smelling the musky scent of her hair, and left for work, as ordered.

Now I sat in the back of a leased tour bus. The bus' windows had been tinted and mirrored, but the afternoon sun still forced its way inside, overpowering the air conditioner. I drank liberally from a liter bottle of water and leaked sweat out of my face.

Nace walked down the aisle, handing out forged press badges to the passengers. He sat down next to me and tossed mine into my lap.

"I won't ask you how you are," he said quietly.

I turned away to look out the window, not speaking to him.

"For what it's worth, I've been in that room," he said. "It's hard, but you do get over it, eventually. You'll see."

"I don't know if knowing that makes it all better or even worse," I said.

"Tonight, the insiders will take you out and we'll all get blitzed."

I cleared my throat and peered some more out the window. We were parked across from a small beachfront park in Fort Lauderdale. Some local news vans were already in the area, their antennas raised; others were still pulling in and vying for the best remaining parking spots.

"How many are there?" I asked, almost to myself.

"How many what?"

"Of us?"

I could feel him sort of shrug. "Close to twenty, now. But not all of us work together, so there may be some I've never met."

In the middle of the park, a small work crew was laying down a low platform. They placed upon it a narrow podium, facing the street. Behind, the ocean waves rolled and swelled, the low rumble punctuated by the calls of seagulls, gliding and flapping in seemingly random directions overhead. A handful of tourists hung out on the beach, doing what tourists in Miami do, which is basically anything that wouldn't remind them of work or school.

"Our mark is named Martin Suarez," Nace pointed past my cheek out towards the podium. "He isn't here yet, but he will be in a few minutes."

"The baseball player?"

"Retired. One of the chief supporters of the enemy, Hernandez. He's been donating a lot of cash to his campaign and to institutions like Pleiades, but more importantly, he's been doing a lot of personal campaigning behind the scenes—getting his rich friends involved, hosting parties, shaking hands, that kind of thing. He's been a pillar of strength for Hernandez for a long time."

"So, what's your plan?"

"Our strategic goal is that we want to isolate Hernandez away from his support system a little at a time, sort of cut him out of the herd. The best way you do that is by forcing him to personally renounce his own biggest supporters. Not only would he lose his helpers, but he'll ultimately be judged by the questionable friends he keeps. People like Martin. The technique we use is called pretzeling.

"Pretzeling is very hard to execute, because you have to do it absolutely perfectly or else it all falls apart, and because magic is involved with it. But if you don't screw it up, it's almost impossible to defend against. That's because the final stage is carried out by the free press while we're safely gone, and once they get rolling on a big story, there's just no hitting the brakes."

I turned back to Nace. "What story?"

"The one we make up. You'll see. Follow me, we're getting started. Nawang is going to want you to hang around him, watch how he pulls the strings. Your real training starts today."

* * *

><p>Nace and I wandered around outside the bus, milling with the gathering crowd of reporters. Or rather, I wandered behind Nace while he worked his personal brand of magic on the people around us.<p>

"Are you guys able to get a signal in?" a frustrated tech approached Nace, looking at his tag to see which outfit he was with.

"No," Nace shook his head. "I heard that the TSA is testing out some kind of new radar feature over at the Fort Lauderdale airport. Only it's leaking into the civilian frequencies. We can't get a live feed in, and our cell phones are spotty, too. Heard a rumor that people called in complaining about their garage doors opening and closing on them."

"Damn," the tech muttered. "Guess we just have to record and courier it back. Sucks for us, because we have a longer drive back than WTVJ does."

"Don't talk to me," Nace laughed. "We're from Tallahassee."

"Wondered who you were. Long ways."

"We cover all the races for state government. Everyone there wants to know whose hand they'll have to pump."

"Got that right," the tech said. "Still, what a pain. Thanks for the info, Kevin'll look into the TSA thing."

"No prob," Nace nodded as we moved on.

We had five or six conversations just like that before Nace stepped away from the crowd, satisfied that he had everything under control.

"Why aren't they able to get a live feed?" I finally asked.

"Because we're jamming them, bonehead," he said, wiggling his thumb over to a pair of nondescript vans parked down the block. "We want them to rely on recordings, because we're going to alter them. The interview they play tonight is going to differ just slightly from the one that actually happens."

"What? _All_ of the tapes?"

"Yup," he said casually.

"That doesn't make sense. Even if you alter their recordings, they're still going to remember what happened in the interview." I frowned in thought.

"That's Nawang's department. And soon it'll be yours, too."

"Oh," I groaned inwardly. _Damn. There goes my virginity_.

A murmur rippled through the mob. I turned to look around and saw a small caravan of cars pulling into the parking lot. A group of suits opened the doors to a black limousine and made their way purposefully through the crowd to the podium.

I had never been a big baseball fan, but I recognized Suarez from his numerous television commercials. "If this guy is making a big announcement, where's Hernandez?" I whispered to Nace.

Nace smiled. "Hernandez is stuck in Tallahassee for a vote he can't miss, or Echemendía would call him out on it. What a shame, huh?"

"Huh," I returned.

As I stood in the back of the crowd, watching the reporters finish jostling for their positions and setting up their equipment, I quietly questioned all the effort being expended for this race. When it came down to it, we were dealing with two guys fighting it out over a two-bit representative spot in the Florida panhandle that paid less than forty thousand dollars a year and was considered a part-time job by the state. Yet everyone was acting like these guys were running for President of the United States. It all seemed so out of proportion to me. The money. The attention. The crime. I just didn't get it.

Suarez didn't use a microphone. He got behind the podium and launched right into his pitch. I found myself professionally admiring his projection. He had a big smile.

I felt a hand touch my right shoulder. It was Nace. He crooked his finger and beckoned me to follow. "There's nothing to see, here," he said.

We wound our way to the back of the park, towards a big white tent marked: "FIRST AID." The flaps on the tent were closed. One of our firm's bodyguards was standing outside, his arms crossed. He looked at me and Nace and nodded at us deferentially. Nace pointed indifferently at the tent door. "Go in," he said. "I'll see you later."

The tent seemed darker inside than it should have. I had to blink a few times before my eyes adjusted to the twilight gloom. Smoke from incense filled the interior. I turned to look at the tent walls, and found them covered from top to bottom with runes, some of the most intricate that I had ever seen. Some of them I recognized, but most went far beyond anything that I had ever studied either under my parents or my Warden master. A sense of unease passed through me, along with a grisly sense of affinity. As if I were somehow a part of the writing. I quietly wondered if the runes I looked at were related to the forms of magic that constructed my Contract, before my Contract shut that line of thinking down.

Nawang sat on the floor in the center of the tent, his legs crossed and his hands in ritual meditative position. He was intoning a preparatory chant, not exactly a spell, but a kind of self-cleaning ritual to prepare for casting. He had surrounded himself with a ring of parchment bearing a second set of runes, some very tiny. Beyond that, he had encircled himself with a ring of one hundred and eight phurbu daggers, just as I had in the warehouse a lifetime ago, with one odd difference—the daggers were pointed _at_ Nawang, instead of away from him. I had never, ever heard of anyone doing that, and I couldn't imagine why he would do it. It almost struck me as intentionally perverse, like someone wearing an upside-down cross.

He opened his eyes and straightened himself.

"Hello, Cimba," he said.

"Hello," I answered.

"I want you to observe me as I cast this spell. I want you to memorize what I do, the way I do it. Understand?"

Before I could say anything else, my body said, "I understand, Master."

He smiled.

"Do you have any questions before we begin?"

I swallowed, looking around the tent. "It looks like a spell of ensorcellment. But it's so complicated, it goes beyond anything I've ever seen."

"It isn't the complexity that baffles you, Cimba. You don't know what you're looking at because it comes from forbidden knowledge. If you had continued your studies under your previous teachers, I doubt that you would ever have seen what you see now, no matter what degree of power you attained."

"Who forbid this knowledge?" I asked.

His eyes twinkled with pleasure. "In my opinion, that is a most salient question," he answered. "The spell you are looking at is indeed a kind of ensorcellment. But not of one person. Today I am going to enthrall the entire crowd outside by the podium."

I instinctively turned back towards the tent flap, astounded. "But—there must be a hundred people out there! There's no way—" I looked back at him. "You couldn't draw enough power. _I _couldn't, anyway."

He nodded. "Our way isn't about power, Cimba. It's about subtlety, and _will_. Walk the tent. Memorize the runes. I will make you reproduce them later."

Of its own accord, my body began to methodically comb the walls of the tent, as I quietly memorized each rune in sequence. While I busied myself with the task, Nawang began to hum his chant. I could feel the energies forming around him, coalescing into patterns that I could sense but did not recognize as anything familiar. Something about the energy flows seemed darker than they should have. _Sharper_. As if thorns covered them. It wasn't supposed to be that way. But Nawang seemed unperturbed.

When my survey of the tent was complete, I sat in one corner, facing Nawang, watching him at work.

The energies around the tent became harder, more defined, bending and shaping to the hammer and anvil of his mind. I was watching a great artist at work, pulling at the strings of the universe, remaking the form of the world into his own creation. His work should have been a thing of brilliance, a thing of beauty—and on the surface it was. But there was an undercurrent to it, a dark yin to the bright yang that gave me a sense of deep unease, like taking an intercontinental airplane trip on a supersonic Concord, champagne in hand, but the passenger in the seat behind you coughs and hacks the whole way.

I used my training to center my mind, to synchronize myself with the flows, to sense them better without having to resort to fully opening my third eye. For all the power flowing around the tent, very little was being drawn from the ground by Nawang. I didn't know where he was getting the rest. Maybe it all really was just the manifestation of his pure will. I had heard of such things, and had practiced myself with will-power for certain kinds of Eastern magic. But when it came to enthrallment, I was on uncertain ground. I had faced enthrallment many times under the watchful eye of Uncle Senge, but I didn't know if a vampire's methods were reproducible by a mortal. I wondered if Nawang's methods were fully reproducible, either. I doubted it.

I dove deeper into the threads of light and dark, exploring their nature. The deeper I went, the more the universe twisted around and folded in upon itself. My conscience moved faster and faster toward the center, pulled inwards.

And then I was in a dream.

I stood alone in a subway station. The station was cast in a dim and yellowed shadow, and the walls and floor were stained with grime, the buildup of years of use, years of neglect. A wind picked up, and blew upon my face from the left. I heard the rolling rumble of the train approach, the _whoosh_ as it drew near. The train was white and sort of trapezoidal from the front. An electric sign above flashed the words "EMBARCADERO" in yellow. The train drew by, its brakes squealing before it came to a stop.

That's when I saw the people through the train's large glass windows. They were all standing, facing outwards towards the platform, unmoving. They all wore black ear-buds. I noticed for the first time that their earphone wires extended out through the open door of the train, twisted together in a great black cable that snaked across the floor and plugged into an old-fashioned microphone that was raised about two feet above the floor. A large pillow-seat with a black pig sewn into the top had been placed in front of the microphone.

A buzzing sound rose and fell near the microphone. As I got closer, I could hear a low voice, whispering, as if I had tuned into a news broadcast over the radio, but couldn't quite get the frequency.

The people in the train stood as still as statues, listening to the voice.

And then I understood. This wasn't my dream. It was Nawang's. I was looking at his own personal metaphor for the spell he was weaving. I had slipped into his mind, which technically was bad, but I think he meant for me to go there, so maybe I wouldn't get into trouble for it. I wasn't going to ask.

The people in the dream train were real human beings. I recognized some of them from the crowd of journalists outside the tent. They were all plugged into Nawang, hearing his whispering voice, being slowly bent to his will, accepting his programming.

I tried to be horrified. Nawang was breaking the laws of magic not merely once, but a hundred times over in the course of an hour. But my Contract held me in check. I knew intellectually that I was supposed to object, that I was supposed to grab the nearest sword and take a good whack at him, but my heart wasn't in it—my heart had been locked away.

I had seen enough to understand how to start practicing his technique, per his orders. Everything I needed was neatly filed away in my brain for future reference, whether I wanted it there or not. I hadn't seen enough to understand all the myriad details, but those were things I would be expected to work out on my own.

I walked away from the dream, and awoke.

Nawang opened his eyes, turning toward me.

"Go," he rasped. "Guide them to the bus and get them seated. You may need to break them up into groups. The others will know what to do."

* * *

><p>Back at the podium, Martin Suarez was busy wrapping up his pitch, so to speak, his gravelly voice cutting through the rolling sea wind. Cameras and microphones pointed at him, perched atop the shoulders of cameramen. Local television reporters stood with them, passively watching him at his work.<p>

Very passively.

When he finished, he looked around at the audience to gauge their reaction to whatever it was he was selling. But the reporters just stared back at him listlessly, empty of any expression at all.

His expression slowly deflated. "Are there any questions?" he shouted out hopefully, but in vain. There were none. No one as much as twitched. They just kept staring at him, like he was a bug. I was standing behind them, and I was unnerved. I didn't know how he could just stand there and absorb all those staring eyes. It must be something you learn to live with when you work in a stadium.

Nothing was said, and the cameras kept rolling.

"¿Que pasa?" he muttered. "Okay, that's it! Remember to vote for Hernandez!"

Suarez pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow before following his team back to his limousine. The crowd didn't disperse as he walked away. He looked back when he got to his car and frowned when he saw that everyone was still facing the podium.

Nace casually ambled forward to the front of the crowd, carrying a rolled-up white poster with him. He waited patiently for the mark's car to pull away and drive off. When they were gone, he unfurled the poster, holding it up in the sunshine.

It was all white, with the black silhouette of a pig in the center.

So faintly that I couldn't be sure I heart it, the crowd of journalists let out a soft moan at the sight of the poster, or at least I thought they did. I felt something shift in the air around me, like someone had hit the carriage return on a manual typewriter just after it dinged.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Nace raised his voice. "Cameramen will line up in single file at the black truck behind you. Everyone else will line up in single file in front of the lady holding the blue sign, over by the bus. You are free to move."

As the crowd lethargically hobbled to their assigned places, I strolled over to Nace, my arms held straight out in front of me. "Brains," I rolled my head and slurred. "Brains!"

He smiled back at me. "Enjoying yourself?"

I shrugged. "It's better than bussing tables," I said. "Where's the work crew?"

"I paid them off to leave."

We walked together toward the bus, Nace flicking his eyes up and down the line of enthralled people. "So, now what?" I asked.

"Now we herd them onto the bus in groups. Once they're seated, we show them a fabricated clip of the mark making racist and generally insulting comments about Miamians, and so on.

"Over at the black trucks, we take the tape from each camera and alter it to include a matching scene.

"When the journalists go back to their studios, they think they have the local story of the century."

"Wow," was all I could say. "Simple."

"Heh. We have to have our computers generate a slightly different video clip, tailored for each camera and its original angle of view of the podium. It takes some pretty sophisticated software to do it. But it's oh-so-worth-it. After this, we just lean back and let the press do our work for us."

"Won't the mark deny it?"

"How? It's on _tape_, man, many times over, and _everyone_ but his own team remember him saying those things. Hernandez will _have_ to denounce him and sever their ties. Thing of beauty."

I looked back at the journalists, quietly feeling for them. People aren't born sheep. But they can be made into them.

"Anything special you need me to do?"

He shook his head. "Just stay around here and make sure no one wanders off before getting their programming. It happens, sometimes."

"Hmph," I grunted at his back as he disappeared into the listless throng. I shuffled back and forth at the fringes of the crowd, watching the reporters and their crews being herded onto the bus to be reprogrammed, wishing—wishing something—something else. And feeling like a glorified border collie. Maybe not so glorified.

"There is no getting used to it," a voice rasped from behind me. Elliot. Buddha help him, he had tried to warn me away.

"I don't care about that," I answered. "Is there any beating it?"

"No," he said slowly, carefully walking through his words. "There is no point in even thinking about finding the magic's source, because only the DA knows what it is, and he will never ever tell a thrall."

"You're right," I said. "Impossible."

"How is she?" he asked quietly.

"Adamant," I said.

"Damn her. I should have married a narwhal and stayed out at sea."

"The sea's more dangerous. Killer whales, and things."

"Not as dangerous as she turned out to be."

"There's not a man in love who hasn't said something like that, I'd guess."

"She's different. I don't know how, exactly. But it's true. I don't think she realizes it, but she's much more powerful than I am. I have begun to doubt that her creation was a random thing, as it might have been for me."

"My homunculus fell in love with her."

He laughed at that. "Good for him. Did he get lucky?"

"No," I sniggered.

"You've already thought about it, haven't you?"

"About what?"

"You know—it." He touched the center of his chest with his fingertips.

"I was thinking about it while the timer was running. I couldn't stop myself. It's the training. I never really understood all those exercises my father and uncle made me do, until now. I just thought Uncle Senge had talked him into being an asshole."

"So, you thought of something?" He raised his head a little, glanced furtively at me.

"No," I said. "Of course not."

"Yes, of course not."

I pinched my lip in thought. Nawang had thrown me into the deep side of the pool. He was counting on me floundering for a while, needing his help to pull me out. To learn to become dependent on him. What I needed right now was a better rope than Nawang could give me. A strong rope.

It was time for me to go to my Uncle Senge. I would never be able to outright tell him what had happened; the magic of my Contract wouldn't permit me. But I doubted that I would need to. He's old, but he's not stupid. Besides I had royally screwed up, and he was entitled to know. I just wished I could have sent him a text message instead of having to face him in person.

The only thing scarier than a hungry vampire is an indignant one.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

Uncle Senge was parked in the hallway outside his room, asleep in his wheelchair, his long legs sprawled out on the floor. A waded pile of old bed linens had been tossed onto the floor next to him. As I got nearer, he started from his sleep suddenly, as if a loud noise had awoken him. He peered around in confusion for a moment before fixing his dark eyes upon me.

As I came closer, a strange growl emanated from his throat. I have never heard him make a noise like that before.

"Stop there," he commanded. I felt my body seize against its will. Even coming right out of sleep, he had the strength of three experienced wizards. The old creature still had it, I had to give it to him.

He sniffed the air like a dog, peering at me with a suspicious look.

"Take off your shirt," he ordered.

"What? Here? In the hallway?" I asked. Buddah's piss, I had assumed that he would figure it out, I just didn't imagine that he would do it in his _sleep_. Well, I guess that's why I had come to him. I had just hoped I could have broken it to him more diplomatically.

"Here," he answered. "In the hallway. For everyone to see your shame."

Seething, I tore my sweatshirt off and let it fall to the floor. The black pig brand on my chest almost seemed to shine with its own dark light. Must have been a trick of the fluorescent lights.

"_Khyi skyag_," Uncle Senge hissed in anger. "How many times has your father warned you about getting into trouble? How could you be so _stupid?_"

"He threatened to kill some friends of mine, Uncle," I practically whined.

"_Then let them die._ Better that, than to let a powerful wizard become the tool and slave of a dark practitioner."

"I'm not powerful. I'm just me."

"Then you haven't been paying attention. You will be used for unspeakable evil, now. How many more people will die at your hand than you saved today?"

I couldn't answer that. I wouldn't. I turned my face away, finally feeling the shame that I had tried to feel before, but couldn't. It was like drowning and coming up for air at the same time.

"I did what I had to do," I insisted again.

"I may have to kill you. You understand this? I cannot permit this kind of shame to persist."

"Thank you, Uncle," was all I could say. "I understand."

"What is the name of the wizard who did this?"

"His name is—I am not permitted."

Uncle Senge narrowed his eyes at me. "I _said_, who did this?"

I felt a hot pressure build upon my chest, as if a tiger had sat upon me. "I—Kalden Nawang. His name is Kalden Nawang."

"That's a Tibetan name."

I nodded.

"How old is he?"

I shrugged. "Sort of old? Not more than I century, I guess. It's always hard to tell with wizards."

He leaned back in his chair, musing. "Where have I heard that name, before? Things happened so quickly in those days."

"What days?"

Uncle Senge flicked his eyes at me. "This thing that was done to you, was it his magic?"

I shook my head.

"But did you see him perform? What was it like?"

"It's nothing I've seen before. It's—it was just weird. Dreams that became real. Intricate runes. Uncle, he pointed the phurbus _towards_ himself. Have you ever heard of something like that? It's like he was mocking his own tools of the trade."

Uncle Senge let out a long hiss.

"Enough," he said. "That will do. Do you remember any of the runes? Remember them exactly?"

I nodded. "He made me memorize them. He's—"

"He's training you," my uncle finished for me.

I nodded again.

"If I ask you to slay yourself, will you do it?"

"I'm not permitted," I answered.

"Then it may truly be that I will have to do it for you. Can you show me one of the runes you memorized? Don't put it on paper, that would be foolish, but draw it in the air for me."

I shook my head. "I'm not allowed."

He leaned toward me, and I felt that hot pressure again. My inner ears began to ache from it. "I'm talking to _you_. I _asked_, will you draw it for me?"

Quickly, before the magic of my Contract could snatch my hand back, I used my index finger to trace one of the simpler runes through the air.

He muttered something to himself. "Show me another. A more complicated one this time—the most complicated one you saw."

I thought through my mental index of the thousands of runes that I saw in the tent, and then I began to move my finger through the air. Uncle Senge's eyes followed the tip of my finger through my careful motions, memorizing every movement of my hand, mentally reconstructing the rune that I had seen.

He was quiet for a long time.

"Now I know who he is," he said. "But I did not know he had turned to such foulness."

"Who is he?"

"Who is he? A hard question. More, I think, than I could ever tell. What he once was no longer matters. He is an Onyx Lama, now."

I shook my head. "Father said nothing of them."

"No, he would not have. There were never many of them. But one is enough. The Onyx Lamas appeared at the time the Chinese took over Tibet. There was much bitterness among the lamas at this time, and much fear. Foreign soldiers had suddenly appeared everywhere, and the Dali Lama could not stop them. Where were the gods who had defended the land for centuries? Where was Mahâkâla, lord of time? Where was Yamântaka, slayer of death? Where was Pälden Lhamo, the great protectress, with the skulls of her enemies dangling at her waist, and her fangs ready to bite? Where were Pälden Lhamo's secret children, who had hunted for evil through mountain, field, sky, and river, always under the cover of the stars?"

He shook his head quietly, continuing, "The gods hid their faces from the Earth, and long before that, Pälden Lhamo's children had fallen deep into to the darkness.

"Mortal men were left to their own devices, and they knew it. Some came to believe that morality could no longer triumph over atrocity. That a great evil could only be combated with a greater. Even some of the Lamas began to believe so. And so these wise men went the way of Pälden Lhamo's children, and embraced the darkness, seeking power and victory."

My uncle fell silent.

"I've never heard of Pälden Lhamo's secret children," I prompted.

"Haven't you?" he looked up at me with red eyes. "But you always were a little slow, Kami."

I waited him out.

"Haven't you ever looked closely at the pictures of Pälden Lhamo? At her face? At her rage? If such a goddess did have children, what would they be like, do you think?"

"They'd be like her. They'd be guardians."

"Oh, yes. But what would they be _like?_"

I thought of her. The skulls. The fangs. The blood. I looked at my uncle. My two thousand plus year-old uncle. And I finally made the connection.

"They'd be vampires," I whispered. "But vampires are evil!"

He looked at me crossly. "Vampires are evil," he repeated, as if he hadn't heard me right.

"Well, you know what I mean! Aren't they? Most of them?" I didn't know what else to say.

He rubbed his withered hand along his wheelchair's armrest. "Better to say we became evil. We started as the guardians of a great land, a beautiful land, with a beautiful people. Pälden Lhamo had bequeathed us with a most ironic power. How better to defeat one's enemies than to take their own strength and wield it against them? But our curse was that we were too powerful for our own good. Many of us craved more. More power, more respect, more riches. One by one, the guardians turned to the darkness, and dwelled there forever. Only a few of us held on to the teachings. And then we became old."

"Were you in Tibet, then?" I asked. "When the Chinese came?"

"I was there when the delegation went to Beijing. The delegation was not permitted to negotiate the Seventeen Point Agreement's contents, or consult with the Dali Lama back in Tibet. But in the end, when the Dali Lama's delegates sealed the Seventeen Point Agreement with the Central People's Government with their own hands, there was nothing more the guardians could do. It was a contract, no matter how disingenuous. No matter how faithless the negotiation. We who guarded Tibet could not legally view the Chinese as enemies of Tibet. The delegation had made it so, in writing.

"Like so many others, I left the homeland. As did your grandparents, with your parents, still in their relative youth."

"And the Onyx Lamas?" I asked.

"Pushed out by the Chinese, too untrained in their new form of magic to score any real victories. Scattered to the four winds. They are everywhere, now. Kalden Nawang is apparently one of them. Now that I know what I am looking for, I can feel his power over you."

"And the vampires who had turned to darkness?"

"They left Tibet long, long ago to seek their fortune. Their progeny are on every continent, herding human beings like cattle. I can feel them as well, here in the city. You work with a few of them. I smell their stench upon you."

If that were true, I wondered if the White Court vampires could smell my uncle upon me, the smell of a guardian who had not gone to the darkness. But if they had, they would probably have killed me outright. Maybe they just smelled another vampire. Maybe faithfulness doesn't have an odor to vampires. Maybe my uncle was lying about not being fallen.

I sat in silence for a while. "What kind of magic does Nawang use, Uncle? What are these runes?"

My uncle took my hands into his. "Listen to me very carefully, Kami. I will say this only once. The magic that he is teaching to you is forbidden to you. Just as the White Council has its laws that it would kill to enforce, so did the Spiral, before the Chinese broke it. And near the top of the list was this magic. It does not belong to you, and was never meant for you to use. You must never use it—ever. Upon pain of death."

"Who does it belong to, then?"

He shook his head. "This is not for you to know. Not yet."

"If it's forbidden, then who trained him?"

"Ahh," my uncle suddenly smiled. "That's a question your father would have asked. Very well, I will say this—he was taught magic by an Outsider. More than that, I will not say."

"Then, this isn't Earth magic at all! It's Outsider magic! That must be why it felt so strange. It's alien."

He shrugged. "I encourage you to forget the matter. It is not for you."

I looked away. The truth was, I didn't think the Contract would let me think about it very much, once I was outside my uncle's influence.

"Uncle," I said. "What shall I do?"

"Lose the pig," he grunted. "And don't die before I kill you." He folded his arms and went back to sleep.

_Okay_, I thought. _Lose the pig_.

I put my sweatshirt back on, and walked out to a darker world.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

It was a kind of cheesy thing to do, but I borrowed a cell phone from a homeless guy camped outside of the nursing home to make a quick phone call. I was afraid to use my own phone for anything this sensitive. Call me paranoid, but being forced into a life of slavery can do that to a guy.

I dialed the number and waited. A voice answered on the other side in Spanish.

"Marcone residence," he said. It wasn't Marcone. I guessed it was his butler.

"George Saga," I answered, looking around me furtively.

"Oh, yes. How are you doing today, Mister Saga?"

"I would like to make an appointment to meet with Marcone. It should be a short visit, I hope."

"I see. He should be able to fit you in before dinner. Is there anything I should tell him?"

"Yes," I carefully chose my words. "Tell him I am coming to engage the enemy."

There was a moment of silence on the other end. "I see," he said. "He will be interested to hear that."

"I, um, also need transportation. I would like to try to be, ah, as discrete as possible."

I heard a muffled sound on the other end of the line. "In that case, George, it would not be a good idea for us to send one of our own cars. We'll send a third party to you. Where are you now?"

"I'm at the Eventide Geriatric Care. South Miami."

"Ah, hmm. Yes. There's a church not far from there, yes? St. John Bosco? There's a walled garden behind it. Go in there, and we'll send someone for you."

"I've driven by it. How will I recognize the driver?"

"He'll show you a picture of Marcone."

"Thanks."

"Our pleasure. I was told to expect your call."

I hung up.

In twenty-four hours, I would have to report my contact with Marcone to the office. Whatever I was going to do, either it would have to be soon, or I'd have to have a good excuse. And it would have to be a true one.

The church was a couple of blocks down the road, at one of those fuzzy borders between the commercial and residential parts of the city. The building was old, even for South Miami. I vaguely remember that once it had a school next door, but that had been sold off and rebuilt into a bank and some offices. Now the church stood alone—a small sanctuary, a garden, and a cottage. I imagined that this was one of those churches that had not seen a new member in years.

Still, it looked like it was being cared for all the same. It was shaded by a pair of massive banyan trees, and the street side of the building was dotted with colorful little reddish trees that I had seen around the city, but whose name I didn't know.

Casually looking around me to see if I was being followed, I rounded the sanctuary to the walled garden behind. The wall was made of limestone, and had eroded unevenly over the long years, leaving cracks, gaps, and pocks on its surface. It should have looked depressing to see so much damage, but somehow it just made the wall look better, more authentic. Tendrils of ivy crept along the top of the wall, which stood about six to seven feet high.

There was a single entrance to the garden, a black iron gate that stood open.

The little garden was filled with roses and other flowering plants that had come to full bloom in the early part of the summer. It was a beautiful place. I didn't think I deserved to be there, in a place of quiet contemplation. Not after all I had just been through. It was a place for other people, now.

I turned my head at the sound of footsteps at the gate. I stood up to see who was coming. The Latino man entering the garden lifted his head and we almost looked into each other's eyes. At that moment, the man came to an abrupt halt, staring at me.

It was Fernando. My warehouse landlord.

Suddenly he burst out into a belly laugh.

"Jorge, no! Say it isn't you!" he said wistfully.

"Hello, Fernando. Are you my driver?"

He held up a picture of Marcone for me to see, shaking his head sadly. "Ay, Dios Mio. All this time, I thought you were living a life of virtue. If I had known that you were working for Marcone, I would have thought very differently about you."

I shook my head. "I don't work for him," I said. "I just wanted to talk with him."

Fernando sighed. "That is how it always starts. Just a little talk. You mark my words. Marcone is a man who gets what he wants, any way he has to. He is not a man for you to cross."

"I won't," I said. "Uh, probably."

"I am very impressed with your connections. If you are destined to live a life of crime, you could do worse than hook up with him. But I hope you know," he added, "that this man is a killer. It is said that he shoots three men before breakfast just to get into the right frame of mind for the day. Whatever you do, never _ever_ sell him a bag of powered sugar, if you know what I'm saying." He thought for a bit more. "I thought you said you didn't want to get involved with people like him!"

"Well, he does legit things, too," I shrugged. "Like, er, helping out with, uh, a political campaign," I said lamely.

Fernando just rolled his eyes in disgust. "The case is closed," he muttered.

* * *

><p>Fernando swung his big black Beemer into the garden behind Marcone's house to let me out. It wasn't exactly a legitimate place for him to park, but it was discreet if you didn't count the South American guests who had to drop their cocktails and get out of the way. Fernando apologized to them by amicably tooting on his horn. Discreet, baby, yeah.<p>

"Thanks, Fernando," I said.

"Try not to look for more trouble than you know how to handle, okay?" he told me, meaningfully shifting his eyes over to the mansion.

"Might be a little late for that," I shrugged.

"If you need, I can find some people who can disappear you. But don't wait to ask for it when you have assholes breathing down your neck."

"I'll remember. But like I said."

"In that case, you got next of kin for your property in the warehouse?"

"Yes," I said. "But I'm not going to name them. They'll find you, if it comes to that." The fact is, all I had of living family was Uncle Senge, who wasn't a blood relation, and Father, whereabouts unknown, probably dead. I didn't know if anyone I was close to would want my things if I left the land of the living. I sure as hell didn't want Fernando to go looking for them.

"Mucho gusto, Jorge."

I nodded and closed the car door behind me. The back door to the mansion magically opened for me as I approached the back of the house.

It was Angel. "Hey, kid," he said.

"Hey."

"Joining the team?"

I shook my head. "Creating an understanding."

"Diplomacy. Tricky stuff, kid. Hope you're up to it."

I smiled. "I'd better be."

"This way, then," he kicked the door shut with his toe and marched ahead of me, his jacket jingling with the multitude of small arms that he carried on his person.

"Is Evans still working for you?" I ventured.

"Sure," he said. "But not in Miami. He got repurposed to, ah, easier jobs. Things more in his line."

"Shame," I said.

"Yes, your boss was beginning to take a liking to him."

I noticed cardboard boxes stacked on the floor near the office, taped and labeled. "Moving out?" I asked.

"Yes, our transaction here is complete. We'll be moving back to Chicago tonight. Here, wait," he grabbed a business card from a table in the waiting room outside Marcone's office, and wrote something on the back. "Our private number in Chicago. In case you need it."

I took the card, looking at it. On the back was the number Angel had scribbled. On the front it said: "Marcone Charitable Trust—Bringing smiles to children around the world!" I put the card in my jeans pocket.

Angel knocked on Marcone's door and opened it. "George is here to see you, sir," he said through the doorway. He nodded at me to go through, closing the door quietly behind me.

Marcone was sitting at his desk, which now was bare, except for a glass of water and an ashtray with half a cigar stubbed out in it. He stood up for me politely, extending his hand across the desk. "Hello, George," he smiled briefly, "I'm pleased to see you again. I will confess that I'm intrigued by the message you provided me."

"I am operating under some challenging constraints," I said.

"Ah," he said. "Ah. Am I permitted to get a closer view of those constraints?"

"I'm operating under a very strict non-disclosure agreement."

"So you said in our last meeting. Is this the same NDA, or a new one?"

"I—I am not permitted to answer that."

"A new one, I surmise. I'm surprised that you were able to make it as far as my office, in that case. It will be the first time someone in your circumstances has been able or willing to do that."

"I negotiated in—uh, certain latitudes, because of my job duties. But unfortunately, my constraints are still extremely tight. We must still meet as enemies, I'm afraid."

Marcone sat in thought for a few moments, looking me over.

"I imagine that your constraints prevent you from seeking out the White Council for assistance in this matter," he ventured.

"Oh," I muttered. "I can neither confirm nor deny that, but the fact is, I might not have had the option to seek them out, anyway. But that's a whole other problem, and I won't bother you with it."

"Ah, George, you have provided me with a small puzzle. I hope you realize that I am an aficionado of 'other stories', as you put it."

"Whatever floats your boat," I said.

"But now to business. I presume you came here for a reason."

"Yesss," I worked through my mind how to say what I needed to say without triggering my Contract's defenses. "I am here to engage you in a hopeless cause, and particularly to drain your resources."

"Are there any specific resources that I may place at your disposal?" Marcone asked.

"Yes," I said, thinking. "Yes," I repeated. "I need a million dollars."

Marcone's total absence of reaction disturbed me.

"Cash, wire, or bullion?" he asked after some moments of staring at me with steel-lined eyes.

"Check. Anonymous offshore account."

"An anachronistic choice. How wizardly of you. I make it out to Dorje Gyaltso Saga, I presume?"

_Damn, I hate it that he keeps pronouncing my real name right._ "No. Make it out to Matthew Bouknight, LL.M."

Marcone steepled his fingers. He tapped his index fingers together rhythmically as he worked it out.

Then he smiled thinly.

"I believe I have misjudged the extent of your cold-bloodedness, Mr. Saga. Shall I also provide you with a profile of Shaffer, Peralta, and Seovic?"

"And they are?"

"One of the more ruthless and infamous legal partnerships in New York City. They are almost certainly—enhanced, although they have been admirably secretive about the subject. And, I may add, Peralta has known health problems. There is speculation that he may soon be forced to retire."

I leaned back. If Marcone could piece it together that quickly, than so could Bouknight. But it was the best plan I had, and it played to my strengths, such as they were.

"I give you a twenty percent chance of success," Marcone clasped his fingers together in his lap.

It was the probably most generous thing he had said all day.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen**

The slow boom of thunder penetrated the walls of the Yargro Publicity Services firm. A late evening summer storm was rolling into Miami from the ocean.

I nodded at the night watchman who sat behind the receptionist's desk now that regular office hours were over. He merely stared me down with beady eyes, saying nothing, doing nothing. I shifted my backpack of wizard supplies and moved on into the building.

The open room of phone banks was fully staffed with employees working the second shift, catching people at the dinner hour. I meandered over to the break room where I had first seen Eliot, wondering if I could get lucky and find him holding court with the ladies.

My luck was holding steady. He was there, sitting with Echemendía. They were alone this time. I guess it wasn't break time for the phone ladies. Or maybe Elliot's magic was being rubbed thin by his Contract. They both seemed so quiet and sober.

"Hey, guys," I said. "How's it going?"

Elliot shrugged, not raising his eyes up from the spot on the far wall that he had been staring at.

"Hey, Echemendía, can I lobby you for something? You know, as a one man political action committee."

"Lobby me?" he slowly raised his head. "For what?"

"It's a good cause. There's a theater that I've been working with, and it's fallen on hard times, and will probably be torn down and replaced with some commercial property. We need to preserve our cultural underpinnings, don't you think? Here's a card with the address. Why don't you head over there and see the place?"

"Yeah," he said. "I know this theater. They asked for help before. I had to turn them down. The truth is, if we put a commercial property in there, we add tax revenue to the city, whereas if the theater stays, our money runs in the wrong direction."

I rolled my eyes, and cleared my throat meaningfully. "_Perhaps_," I said, "this would be a good time to take a second look at the place."

He put the card down and looked at me incredulously. "What, at night?"

"There's people there at all times of the day."

Echemendía looked back and forth between me and Elliot. "The three amigos told me to stay here," he said to Elliot.

"They're upstairs," Elliot mused. "I can take them out to the Devolution. How important is this to you, George?"

"Life and death," I said quietly.

Elliot didn't say anything for a while. "Okay," he stood up. "Give me about ten minutes to get them out of the building." He shook Echemendía's hand. "Whatever it is, good luck to you both."

"And to you," I said.

About five minutes later, Echemendía and I watched as Elliot led Isaac Wright and his brethren past the phone bank and out toward the front door.

"Okay," I looked at Echemendía. "Time for you to go."

"I can't," he said, a pained expression forming on his face. "It's the magic. I can't disobey an order that they give me. I have to stay in this room." He looked at me apologetically.

I quietly swore to myself. I had really hoped to get him out of harm's way, in case things went badly with my plans.

"All right," I said. "Take care of yourself."

"And angels help you."

"I've never met any," I replied.

"You might still," he suggested.

"Hmph."

I wound my way through the hallways, clutching my backpack close to me. It weighed me down and jingled with all my paraphernalia, but everything in there was critical for the kinds of magic I was going to try.

One flight of stairs cruised past me, then two. I stood in front of the locked door to the third floor. I didn't really _have_ to perform my magic here. But there were two things that were useful to me about the third floor: one, it gave me some measure of privacy, and two, it put me physically close to Matthew Bouknight.

I could have used the thumb reader to open the door. I was in the system, and I had free access. But I didn't want to ring the doorbell, either. I ran my fingers around the edge of the door, feeling around for where the electronics tied to the door's magnetic lock were held. When I was pretty sure I had them, I fed out a very small reverse hex.

The door swung open silently, and I quickly slipped inside the hallway, shutting the door behind me. With luck, I hadn't tripped any alarms. I held my breath. There were no noises. Bouknight was nearby, probably in his office at the end of the hall. I could feel him through our connection with the Contract's magic. And he could feel me, too. He just had no reason to care, I hoped.

I tried one of the doors at random. It wasn't locked. When I opened it, the room beyond was empty except for the detritus of years of neglect. Wires, dust, and bits of broken glass littered the concrete floor. I found myself wishing that I had thought to bring a broom with me, but truthfully, the debris wouldn't stop me from performing my rituals.

There were no operating lights in the room. Pulling a single candle out of my pocket, I whispered "_Nyima_" at it, and affixed it to the floor in the corner. I put down my backpack and pulled a vinyl placemat out, taping it over the glass square in the door. I shut the door quietly and wedged a pair of wooden triangles under it to hold it closed. It wouldn't stop a bear from getting in, but might be enough to stop a curious night guard. It was the best that I could manage on short notice.

Carefully and quietly, I began to pull my things out of the backpack. In a matter of minutes, I had my collection of phurbu daggers arranged in a protective circle, and had placed my bell and scepter in the circle's center. I put two small porcelain cups on the floor that I filled with green tea, and warmed them with a whisper.

I also had a round windshield sunshade velcro'd to the outside of my backpack. It was the kind that has a memory wire on the outside that can be twisted up to pack the shade down to a small circle. For making a fast magic circle, there's nothing in the world like one of those shades. Just pull it out, let the wire unfold, and _pow_, you have a circle big enough to stand in, or to summon a small demon in. As a bonus, the rain doesn't wash it away like it does to chalk, and afterwards I can use it as a cheap umbrella. Afterwards. Yeah, I'm sometimes too optimistic for my own good.

I pulled it off the backpack, popped it open, and laid it out on the floor.

That's when the cell phone rang. I looked down at my pocket. I wasn't expecting any calls tonight. The phone kept ringing.

I pulled it out and opened it. "Hello?" I said.

"Lobsang?" a voice said through the phone. _Cripes_, I thought. _It's Nawang._

"Yeah?" I answered. A sudden layer of sweat began to build on my forehead.

"I—something's not right," he rambled.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm getting a warning," he answered. "I'm—I think I'm going to be betrayed. Where are the vampires?"

"They went to Devolution, with Elliot."

"Elliot—no. Not him. And not the vampires. Who?"

I didn't know what to say. I didn't say anything. "Where are you?" I finally asked.

"The condo. George, do something for me."

"What?"

"Tell me where your two friends are hiding out. You know, Mr. Holifield and Ms. Felix. Maybe it's them. They're still on the roll."

My mouth almost opened to tell him, but I played a loophole in my programming to stop myself. I wasn't going to endanger them a second time. Never again.

"No," I said. "Leave them alone. They have nothing to do with it."

There was silence on the other end for a moment. "I gave you a direct order," he said. "Obey me."

"No," I said again. "I'm on vacation. I have one hour accrued. Boss."

Silence again. "Use your hour wisely," he said.

"I will." I snapped the phone shut and put it back into my pocket.

Well, now I'd done it. If I wasn't committed before, I sure was now.

Taking a few deep breaths to center myself, I sat cross-legged in the center of the sunshade, leaving the daggers alone for the second phase of my plan.

Well, I couldn't exactly call it a _plan_. My Contract would never let me make an overt one. But I realized early on that the same techniques that I had learned to make my mind slippery against mental attack inoculated me to a small degree against the iron control of the Contract's magic. I couldn't have a plan. But I could have thoughts that shot around faster than the Contract could catch them. By jumping from one thought to another, I could form—well, if not a plan, then the framework for one. The shadow of one.

I couldn't violate my Contract. But I also understood that with my Contract, there was no "spirit of the law". There was only the letter of the law. It was as if the Contract were a complex computer program that had been laid over my essence, controlling it with gears and levers, and not with any real intelligence.

What makes Contracts so effective with regular people is how intimidating they are. Untrained people learn not to fight the Contract's magic, because it's simply too psychologically disturbing to have something inside of them reach out and assert physical control of their bodies when they try to do something it doesn't allow. But a Contract can be outthought. The letter of the law can be upheld, yet the spirit circumvented in small amounts. The fey do it all the time in their agreements with mortals.

And I was doing it now, by tiny measures.

I laid out a small pile of dry sticks in a little campfire formation just outside my circle and set it afire with a whisper. The fire was a small one. It had to be. I didn't want to accidentally set off the fire sprinklers and bring security down on me.

When the fire was hot enough, I closed my eyes and concentrated.

The magic that I was attempting was uniquely Tibetan. It had been passed down to me from my parents. My last master, a western Warden, would have known little about it, and having seen it, would not have been able to duplicate it.

That's because the magic I was performing didn't draw its power from the ground—or at least, not much. It drew it from my internal force of will. I touched the edge of the circle that I was sitting in, and closed off the world of magic, isolating myself. I wanted peace and quiet from that world, so that I could wholly concentrate on my own will, which could still penetrate the magic circle and touch the fire.

Slowly, painstakingly, I used my will to reform and reshape the elements of wood and fire in front of me into something else. I twisted the wood and massaged the fire, pulled them like taffy, worked them together into something new.

When I opened my eyes, a perfect ripe orange was sitting on top of the smoldering embers of the fire's remains.

It was just practice, but it boosted my confidence to see that I hadn't screwed it up. I picked up the orange, feeling it, looking at it. If I had opened my third eye, I wouldn't have seen an orange. I would have seen a ball of fire around a twisted core of wood. But to my regular senses, it seemed totally real.

I had just made a _tulpa_. I've been practicing doing them for years. But the one I was about to make next was far and above the most complex that I had ever attempted—far more than the simple toy orange in my hand. But I couldn't fail. I _mustn't_. I had no other plan, and now that I had spoken with Nawang in person, I was committed to do whatever I was going to do before one hour elapsed.

* * *

><p>The first thing a wizard learns in his early training is not to fear the Mystery. Forget the Force, what really surrounds and binds us is the <em>unknown<em>. It's everywhere, and it's eternal, and all mortals naturally shrink from it. It's why we blanket ourselves with ritual, and social norms, and dogma, and religion. We cling to the familiar, even if it's wrong, because a good warm myth that we all share seems better than the empty blackness outside our doors. The Mystery is where the universe started, and is what you find beyond its expanding walls. The Mystery is where we go when we die.

We don't look at it. We make up stories to make it go away.

But it's also where the magic is.

I sat in the circle and closed my eyes, my head bowed. And I let it all go. Theism. Capitalism. Scientific Method. Language. Modesty. Belief. Need.

I accepted the universe on its own terms, all of it. Good and bad.

And then I turned it all around, and imposed my will upon the cosmos. Upon the little bonfire smoldering in front of me. I shaped it, cajoled it, sang to it. Made it my own.

Agony slowly filled me, the heat of the universe's resistance to me. But I endured it, let it become a part of me. I chanted endless loops of mantra to keep my mind clear.

And then I could feel the universe begin to bend. At least, I hoped it was the universe bending. If not, I was going to have a hell of a backache when I opened my eyes.

My will flowed out into the fold I had made in the fabric of existence. It became like a third hand for me, shaping, defining, specifying a new reality, built upon the embers of the old.

I opened my eyes.

In front of me squatted the upper half of a smallish demon—maybe four feet tall—its lower half wreathed in smoke. I had made it. It wasn't a real demon. But it definitely looked like one, from the baboon-like face, to pus-dripping scales, to the bloodshot, glowing eyes, to the pointy-toothed fangs.

A quiet smile crept across my face. It was the best work I had ever done. It would damned well have to be.

I picked up one of the porcelain tea-cups from the floor and drank half of it.

"My blood," I said to the demon, although it couldn't hear me.

I held the cup out and willed the demon to take it and drink from it. It gurgled the liquid down and suddenly belched out a puff of steam.

"My blood," the demon said in a raspy voice.

We were joined as one through the tea that we shared. I could see through its eyes, make it move, speak through it. My _tulpa_. A thing of beauty. My will pulsed through it, around it, holding it to the bosom of the word, holding it to my purpose.

Who was to say that I myself wasn't some other being's tulpa, there in that room, at that very moment? A figment of some greater being's imagination and need? Stranger things could be true, and the powers to make it true were out there. I hadn't seen them, but I knew of them just the same.

You see, it paid to worry about such beings. Because the universe wasn't mine, and I had just vandalized it, from a certain point of view. If the cosmos did belong to someone who cared, then eventually that someone might come looking for the asshole who dented his masterpiece.

I reverted my tulpa back to smoke and mentally flew with it out the crack in the bottom of the door. The swirling and cascading of the smoke confused and unnerved me. I felt like I was pulling in all directions, that I was about to fly apart at any moment. I moved in complex circles, like the rushing of the waves along the top of a beach.

My tulpa pushed forward down the hall to its very end. Bouknight's door was closed, a dim and flickering light visible underneath. I guess he preferred the candlelight all the time. Maybe DA's were like wizards, and didn't mix well with technology.

I took in a proverbial breath and pushed myself under the door. When my full mass was in the room, I concentrated upon my imagined view of my demon, allowing the smoke to coalesce back into the form that I had built back in my room.

Bouknight was seated at his desk, looking down at one of his parchments, deep in thought. It took a while for him to come out of his reverie and look up. When he did, he practically jumped out of his seat before pulling himself back together.

"This is my home," he said to me.

"The trick to stepping past the threshold," I said, "is believing that you would have invited me in, if you knew me."

"I am not a student of assumption," he answered.

"If you were, I wouldn't be here. Looking for you."

Matthew Bouknight held his hand out toward me, as if trying to warm it by a fire. "I cannot feel you," he said suspiciously.

"This surprises you? Consider my precaution to be a sign of my respect for your growing power," I replied.

"Since I can't force you to leave, who are you, and what do you want?"

I conjured up a cigarette from the smoke swirling around me, put it to my reptilian lips, and took a long draw. "For the purposes of this conversation, you can call me Voran-hon. And I am simply here to discuss your career goals with you."

"Meaning that you are going to force me to step down? It's been tried before," he growled.

I shook my overlarge head. "Quite the opposite," I said. "It's time for you to step up."

His mouth made a tiny "O" and he pushed himself back a little in his seat. "That may not be possible," he said. "I have a jealous master."

I waved my claw unconcernedly. "That's between buyer and seller. It's not your worry. But forgive me, you need to know some specifics." My tulpa reached into itself and pulled out the business card that Marcone had given me for Shaffer, Peralta, and Seovic. With a puff of gentle magic, I let the air carry it from my claw to his desk, letting it land in front of him.

He picked up the card, feeling it.

"You have heard, perhaps, about Peralta?" I asked.

He nodded, still feeling the card.

"It's very sad. It's a terrible thing when a firm loses a capable partner. But it could be good news for the up and comers, such as yourself."

"You're offering a full partnership?" he suddenly looked at me.

"I think a junior partnership would be more appropriate for someone at your experience level."

"You expect me to drop a full partnership here to assume junior partnership elsewhere?"

"Considering the firm in question, yes. Titles aside, it would be an appreciable step up for you."

"Hmm," he grunted, looking at the card again. "What's my competition?"

"Perhaps a few others. Perhaps not. Certainly I wouldn't be here if I didn't think you were competitive. And personally, I will say that you would be my first choice for the job. Let me explain to you what makes you attractive as a candidate. I am sad to say that there are many DA's who come to eschew their powers, preferring to stick to mundane work. You know who I'm talking about, don't you?"

He worked his knuckles for a moment, thinking. "Yes," he said.

"You, on the other hand, have struck a balance of high professionalism and courage. By courage, I mean the courage to be strong. The courage to use your gifts to their fullest measure. But also, to use them with precision, with surgical effect. It's a difficult path that you walk. But is it challenging enough? That is the question, isn't it?"

He pursed his lips.

My demon smiled, or made a reasonable facsimile of one. It probably looked terrifying. I waved my claw again, and this time a small rectangular piece of paper floated down from above us. It fluttered to the middle of Bouknight's desk.

The beautiful thing about a check is that it is just a special kind of contract, and contracts are the domain of the DA. A Devil's Advocate only has to read a contract once to know if it is legal and genuine, to instantly see through its flaws and loopholes.

He picked it up and looked at it. "It's real," he whispered.

"So is the position," my tulpa said.

"I gather there are conditions to my cashing this check?"

"Life cannot exist without the proper conditions," I answered. My tulpa took a draw on its imaginary cigarette, and added to the wreath of smoke drifting lazily around it. "Consider it a sign-on bonus, should you choose to seek employment at the firm."

"I see. I will have to vet the firm, of course."

My tulpa smiled a monkey smile. "You already know some of the people who work there. Why not give them a call? If you are quick enough about it, I'm sure that word won't get back to your master."

He swallowed. "And your other conditions?"

"As you said, this is the time that we sniff each other out. You vet me, I vet you."

He crossed his arms. "And that involves?"

"Due diligence requires that I read your contract before considering novation. If the contract is poorly written, we may have to create a new one for you."

Did I just say the word _novation_ to a lawyer? And _due diligence_? Am I an actor, or what?

Bouknight blanched. "Of course, I must outright refuse to allow anyone to read my contract. I am bound by non-disclosure, as you must be aware. Let me be profoundly clear about that."

"Naturally, you _shouldn't_," my tulpa said wryly. "But that isn't the same as _can't_. Well, if you prefer, I could simply ask your master for his copy to review. I'm sure he will be especially understanding with you if the negotiations fall through."

Bouknight looked down at the table, working that out.

"The last option," I offered, "is that we go our separate ways. You hand back the check, and go back to your routine life, wondering what you might have accomplished." My tulpa held its claw out.

"Wait. I must have your word of non-disclosure. In writing."

"You only get one Contract with us at a time. That is the rule, and you know it," I hoped what I was saying was true.

He looked back and forth between the check, the business card, and me.

I cleared my reptilian throat. "Surely it's time for you to learn how to play the employment game, yes? There are rules, and then there are rules. It comes down to whether you have the will to achieve your goals."

Bouknight picked up the business card again, gripping it tightly in his fingers. Then he slapped it down on the desk, evidently having come to a decision. He opened his wooden box and pulled his supply of human vellum out, setting it to one side. Other items came out as well—some more black quills, a gavel, objects that might have been trophies from his career.

Finally, a flat, rectangular, jet black box came out. And when I say black, I mean _black_, like a hole had been torn in space-time. Something about it was even creepier than his vellum.

He set it carefully on the desk, staring at it for a few moments, working himself up to a final decision.

He looked at the check again. The very real check with his name on it. For a million dollars.

The DA waved his right hand over the top of the box. Fiery red runes bubbled up against its blackness, seeming to float against the nothingness. He pressed them in a careful sequence. The box clicked, and he opened it.

He pulled out a stack of blood-red vellum, turned it around, and laid it at my side of the desk. Arteries ran through the paper, carrying real blood. They gently pulsed.

Oh, yes. Definitely creepy.

I floated closer to the sapele desk.

Taking a deep breath, I opened my third eye and started to read. I needed my third eye, because I needed to burn Bouknight's Contract into my memory. I was committed now, and no matter how much it hurt me, I couldn't afford to have to do anything twice. With a gentle breath of magic, I used the wind to turn each page.

Under my third eye, the black ink took on a whole new dimension. It wasn't just something added to a flat piece of paper. The writing was intertwined with the arteries and veins of the vellum. The document was a living creature, malevolent and sentient. It was an extension of the demon who had written it, feeding power into the DA.

It knew it was being read, and not by Bouknight.

I had to hurry.

The pages flipped over, one at a time, as I memorized each, my gut twisting further with the sheer alienness and cruelty of the document.

On the last page, I read the signature of the Contract's author. I had the demon's true name. I would have it forever, burned revoltingly into my mind.

Omwor-ust.

I had never heard of any demon with that name. But looking at the power flowing through the document, it was a definite bad-ass in the demon world. I was so, so out of my depth trying this. But I had gone out of my depth long ago. When you're too far below the river's surface to make it back alive, you might as well just keep swimming down and see what you get.

"I will be in touch," I said to Bouknight. "Feel free to hold onto the check."

I didn't give him time to reply. I peeled away the layers of the tulpa's material essence and converted it back to smoke, as I had done on the way into the room, pushing the curls of sooty gas out through the crack in the bottom of the door. As soon as I was completely outside, I disengaged my consciousness from my tulpa, and let it dissolve there in the hallway. It has served its purpose.

I got what I needed, and I hadn't told a single lie to Bouknight, at least, not explicitly.

Now things were going to get dangerous.

* * *

><p>Back in the abandoned office, I slowly opened my eyes. A bad headache was creeping up on me from my spine, heading forward. I had pushed myself too hard with the tulpa. The after-effects left me feeling vaguely nauseated, and physically exhausted. My body suggested to me that I lie down for a moment and recover. I suggested to my body that it shove off.<p>

Omwor-ust was coming.

I couldn't stop that, now. But I could make it come on my terms.

I rolled to the side from my cross-legged position on top of the windshield shade circle, and worked myself into a standing position, tottering for a few moments.

As carefully as I could manage, I tiptoed through the spiral of arranged phurbu daggers that I had made earlier for myself. Where I could establish a circle of protection from demons.

I sat down cross-legged again, facing the windshield shade. With my right hand, I picked up the thunderbolt scepter, and with my left, I lifted up the bell.

It thundered again outside. The ceiling rattled from it.

For a moment, my eyes closed of their own volition. I didn't try to open them. Instead, I began to chant a mantra, calming my mind, calming my body, shutting down the adrenaline that pumped through me every time I thought about how little time I had to do what I needed to do. It was hard. I had lived with fear for much of my life. It was a friend of mine. But now, it was underfoot.

I started to ring the bell, continuing my chant.

Bouknight was bound to hear. He might even know what I was doing. But some magic just can't be done quietly.

"Omwor-ust," I called, using my perfect knowledge of its name flow through me and out of me, letting my mind reach through the circle of the windshield shade. "Omwor-ust," I called, over and over.

Smoke began to dribble into the circle.

"Omwor-ust!" I cried. I rang the bell even harder. "Omwor-ust!"

And then _it_ was there. All eight and a half feet of it. Its head was bent downwards because the ceiling was only eight feet high.

Omwor-ust. The holder of Bouknight's Contract, the Contract that made him a DA, and bound them together. The creature that probably would get Bouknight's soul when he died. He had the head of a bull with a Brahma bull's horns, and the eyes of a goat. His semi-translucent, garnet-red skin was covered with pustules and oozing, noisome sores.

"Uh, hi," I said.

"_**Mortal scum,**_" Omwor-ust rebuked me. "_**Release me and die.**_"

"There's something I need from you first," I said. "Would you care for a gift of blood?" I held up the porcelain cup.

"_**That is only tea,**_" the demon hissed. "_**I care nothing for your insubstantial gifts.**_"

"Right," I said. "Okay, well, here's what I need. I, ah, need you to terminate your Contract with one Matthew Bouknight, effective immediately."

I think it was literal fire that came out of the demon's eyes.

He laughed cruelly. "_**Or, what?**_"

"Or," I said, pulling the firm's cell phone out of my jeans pocket, "I make a call to John Marcone of Chicago, and I tell him your true name. You see, my Contract prevents me from selling out the firm to Marcone. But there's nothing in the Contract to stop me from selling out _you_." The phone tootled with its power-on tone.

Steam seemed to rise off of the demon's skin. The room suddenly felt a lot warmer, too.

The demon lifted up its right hand, and pointed a single scaly finger right at my phone.

Sparks suddenly shot out of it, and the lcd screen flickered and died. Acrid smoke surrounded me.

"Um," I rasped. "You shouldn't have been able to do that."

I could hear heavy footsteps coming down the hallway from Bouknight's office.

"_**Mortal child, I stretch far beyond you,**_" the demon. "_**Death comes for you.**_"

I jumped for a moment as a heavy clanging exploded from the metal door. Bouknight had come knocking. The two wooden wedges held the door in place, but only just. Bouknight rammed his body into the door again. This time, the wedges slid back a half of an inch.

"_**Fare thee well, scum,**_" the demon said.

"Wait, we're not done," I answered. I held the phone up and reverse-hexed it back to life. The screen lit up and the phone tootled again.

The fire in the demon's eyes seemed to narrow down to pinpricks. "_**Now I see. Your magic is left-handed,**_" the demon muttered.

"Yes," I said. "Uh, left-handed."

"_**It explains much. Not about you. About your father.**_"

"Uh, right. How is he?"

The door banged again, even harder than before. Bouknight was screeching wildly on the other side, like a wild animal that had been set loose.

The demon was silent.

"The call, as promised," I said. I started dialing. Through the corner of my eye, the screen showed that the cell phone had no signal. But there was nothing to do but push ahead, now, and hope Omwor-ust couldn't tell from his confinement in the little circle that I hadn't fully fixed the phone.

"Hello?" I said into the phone. "Mister Marcone? I have the name—"

The door burst open. The wooden wedges bounced around the room, hitting one wall after the other. It was sheer luck that neither of them hit me or the demon. Bouknight loomed in the door frame, rasping. His semi-automatic was dangling in his right hand.

He screeched again, piercingly loud. It was as if all that was civilized about him had been stripped away, leaving only the most primitive parts of him behind.

He had been called by his master.

He raised his gun at me, and took aim.

I spoke again into the phone. "The demon's name is—"

"_**Enough,**_" the demon grunted. "_**Matthew Bouknight, I release thee from thy Contract.**_"

"No! Our agreement! My _soul_!" Bouknight screeched pathetically.

He suddenly dropped to the ground, as if in enormous pain.

"Please, no! I'll give you anything! _Master_!"

"_**Return to me,**_" the demon droned. "_**Return to me, my Power.**_"

Bouknight's screams curdled my blood. I'd seen a few bad things in my training, I'd had a few bad things happen to me. But nothing as cruel as what I was seeing now.

"_**Return to me,**_" the demon said again. "_**Mortal, I absorb thee.**_"

Bouknight lay prone on the concrete floor now, his body flopping around as if he were a fish that had just been dropped onto dry land. His skin started to come off, and his body started to smoke. Bits of ash fell off of him, and his skin blackened and blistered. His thousand dollar suit caught fire.

That's when the pain ripped through me.

I screamed in unison with him, my fingers tearing involuntarily at my chest, where the pain was the worst.

Fire enveloped me, and I couldn't stop it. I couldn't think enough to stop my screaming, let alone to try to protect myself with magic. I could barely sense what was going on around me, too caught up in my own unrelenting agony. I thought my clothes might have burned away.

But the shadow of the demon was still there, in the circle, watching us writhe.

My screaming stopped. I still felt the pain piercing me from every direction, but I think my body was just too tired to protest aloud.

I felt like I was drowning in scalding water. Or maybe I was the water, boiling around a hot spot in the sea floor, surrounded by darkness and the clicking and buzzing of the local sea life. My body ripped and rolled with the currents, taken in every direction.

Something was leaving me. The demonfire that had glued me together when I had signed my contract. It was returning to Bouknight. And through Bouknight, back to his master.

I screamed again, one last time, and flopped forward. My face touched one of the ice-cold phurbu knives, and almost displaced it. I breathed heavily.

Bouknight was gone. Just a greasy, ashen smear on the floor marked the spot where he had died. Even his gun looked like it had melted into slag. I didn't know if his soul had gone to Omwor-ust or not. I was pretty sure that I didn't want to find out either way.

"_**Know this**_," Omwor-ust growled at me from his place in the circle, "_**You have made me discard a beloved servant, and have made yourself a life-long enemy. Die soon, and suffer.**_"

With that, a cold wind blew through the room. Omwor-ust seemed to shrink away into the windshield shade, and then it was gone.

I was suddenly alone. And I was alive.

Slowly and painfully, I sat up. My naked body was covered with soot. The outer layer of my skin had burned away, leaving the pink sub-dermis exposed. I put my hand to the top of my head. All my hair was gone. All my hair, everywhere.

It was a bit weird, but it could have been much, much worse.

As for the black pig, it was gone from my chest. Well, mostly. There was still a pig-shaped scar on my pink skin. I'd probably have that for the rest of my life.

If I ever made my own evil firm with vampire management, I thought to myself, I was definitely going to pick a much cooler logo than a stupid pig.

Finally, it hit me.

"I'm free," I whispered. "Do you hear that, Nawang? Oh, yes. I'm free."


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen**

Feeling like I had exchanged my body with an old man's, I shuffled over to my backpack and pulled out a backup set of clothes—an undershirt, swim shorts, and thin flip-flops. The nerve-ends in my exfoliated skin were all exposed and raw. It hurt just to touch the bag with my fingertips.

I looked down at the floor, at my set of phurbu daggers. They would be awfully heavy to carry. But they were the only set I had. Sighing, I bent down and scraped them, along with the bell and scepter, into the mouth of the bag, cursing with each movement of my arm. I folded up my magic circle and pressed it to the back of the backpack, holding it there with Velcro.

After a moment's consideration, I unzipped a side pocket and pulled out a small stoppered bottle, my personal cell-phone, and a foot-and-a-half long rune-covered cylinder of wood.

The bottle contained one of my healing potions. I popped it open and gulped it down, trying not to think about how it tasted. I'd been drinking an awful lot of them in the last few days, and I was starting to get worried that I might start developing a tolerance for them—or worse, a chemical dependency. My alchemy book didn't have much to say about it, other than mentioning that the potion recipes were meant only for occasional use.

My healing potion by design was a slow-acting one. It would simply help my body to heal itself more quickly, but nothing beyond that. Until then, I'd still look like yet another unfortunate beach-going tourist who had been kissed by the sun—with extreme prejudice.

I threw away the broken company cell phone, and pushed my personal phone into the right pocket of my swim shorts.

The rune-covered stick was my focusing rod. I use it to make certain spells seem more powerful by concentrating their effect to a more limited space. Sort of like using a magnifying glass to turn sunlight into a laser beam. Just the thing for close-in fighting, with elemental magic as the weapon.

Not that it would do me much good in a real fight. I'm the first to admit that my skills at battle-magic are pretty much non-existent. Buddha knows that I've practiced, but I just don't have the knack. Or, maybe I just never had the motivation. There were so many other things I wanted to do with my time, and none of them involved depriving someone or something of its life.

I looked at the focusing rod for a moment, considering it, and tried to shove it into my other pocket far enough to stay put, without success. Cursing quietly, I instead gripped it in my left hand, pulled on the backpack's shoulder straps, and headed for the stairwell, clanking like I was wearing a full set of chainmail. But I wasn't heading for the stairs. Instead, I was interested in taking a look at the building's fire sprinkler system. You never know, it might not be to code. And if it was, it was about not to be.

The stairwell was crisscrossed with bright red pipes. The kind we never look at when we're in stairwells, because—I guess, because they don't apply to us. They are for a system that we never expect to really need, and that operates automatically when we do. A fat red pipe pushed up vertically through the concrete stairwell landing, with more, thinner red pipes springing out of it at intervals. The center pipe had some valves on it that were padlocked into position, and at the top, near the ceiling, a round pressure gauge was attached to it.

I made myself comfortable and took a long breath, pointing the focusing rod at the trunk. "_Ketu_," I whispered, taking a long draw at the flow of magic welling up from the ground. A cold light burst out of the focusing rod, bathing the red pipe in hues of blue. I held the beam of light steady on the same spot for as long as I was able. Since I was taking my time, I could afford to push out only as much power as I could take in, helping me to sustain the magic for much longer than I would be able to if I was doing something more vigorous.

The pipe started to make a groaning and throbbing sound. It sounded the way I imagined that a submarine would when it was diving.

That's because I was slowly freezing the water in the pipe. By now, it was almost completely solid.

The pipe rattled and knocked even louder. Ice was forming on the outside, as the humid air condensed. And then with a sudden bang, a long vertical crack formed in the center pipe.

"Okay," I said.

Without a second look, I trod back into the hallway, walking to the very end. To Bouknight's office. I didn't pause outside of his door. He was dead; there wasn't anyone to tell me not to go in. I kicked his door open and stepped in.

The candles in the wall were out.

I held the focusing rod over my head. "_Skamar_," I said. A small, bright light appeared near the ceiling, right above me. It wasn't bright, but it would be enough to keep me from tripping over my own feet.

The desk was a mess. His private wooden box had burned of its own accord, leaving a square-shaped charred hole in the desktop. I picked up Shaffer, Peralta, and Seovic's business card from the desk and stuffed it into my pocket. But I left Marcone's check where it rested in the middle of the desktop.

"_Nyima_," I said to the wooden desk, holding my focusing rod out. Fire erupted around it, bathing the room in a cheery red and orange light. The check quickly curled up into a ball of glowing ash, erasing the million dollar payout to Bouknight. "_Nyima_," I said to the bookcases. And the chairs. And anything else that looked flammable.

A popping sound came from a lone sprinkler head in the center of the room. A bit of rusty-looking water spritzed out, trickled, and stopped. The fire spread up the walls, cracking and roaring, filling the room with acrid, oily smoke.

And then I left.

* * *

><p>Downstairs, I wound my way through empty hallways, aiming for the break room where I had left Echemendía behind. I came to a halt when I saw them mob of excited people running into and out of the room, shouting to each other in a crazed mix of English and Spanish. A pair of people hurried out of the room, fire extinguishers in their hands, trailing thin wisps of frozen carbon dioxide.<p>

I grabbed the arm of a young woman who was pushing by me, stopping her. "What happened?" I asked her.

"He caught fire!" she said to me, wide-eyed. And then she paused long enough to give me a real look. She glanced back at the room, and then at me again. "Oh, Dios mio! You, too?"

I nodded silently.

She crossed herself hurriedly. "The devil is in the building!" she stammered and tried to pull herself away from me.

"The floor boss," I said to her. "Where?"

She pointed to the break room before yanking herself away from me, running to her desk to grab her purse and flee.

I dashed into the break room, pushing my way past the crowd of concerned and frightened employees. The floor boss was kneeling next to Echemendía, who was lying on the floor on his back, naked and burned as I was. He was awake, weeping uncontrollably. I couldn't really blame him.

Thinking for a moment, I rummaged through the break room cabinets until I found a vinyl table cloth to lay over Echemendía. The floor boss, a young man who I had seen a few times before, shook his head at me when I came over with it. "It's burns," he said to me matter-of-factly, as if I couldn't see the obvious. "We need to let the paramedics treat him before we touch his skin with anything."

"Listen to me," I replied, getting as close to eye-contact as I dared. "There's a chemical leak on the third floor. We have to evacuate the building. We can't wait for the paramedics."

"What do you mean? What kind of chemicals?"

"It's ether," I said. "It's all over the building by now. You understand?" I glanced down at Echemendía meaningfully. "We have to get everyone out."

"Mother of God," he whispered, barely audible over the noise of the mob. "Is _that_ what they were doing on the third floor? You sons of bitches!"

"There's no time for that. We have to save lives."

"Okay," he said. "Okay." He got up, banging his hands together loudly. "Listen, everybody!" he shouted out in Spanish. "Listen carefully! There's a flammable gas leak in the building, that's what got Francisco here! I need everyone to quietly but quickly evacuate. Don't bother with your things, just go now!" He looked at me for a moment. I nodded at him. He nodded back, took a breath, and walked over to the fire alarm pull and activated it.

As the alarm blared, the two of us helped Echemendía wrap himself with the table cloth and walked with him out of the building, following everyone else through the double-doored entrance into the night. We were the last in line to leave. With luck, I'd be able to get Echemendía separated from everyone else once we were outside. A hospital might be a wonderful house of healing for him, but it would be too unsafe for him with Nawang and friends still on the loose. I had to get him to a secure place, and quickly.

* * *

><p>The city lights created a dull glow around the dark, pregnant clouds looming over us. Thunder rolled around us from all directions, and heat lightning flickered across the cloud-tops like candlelight. A steady mist was falling from the sky, which threatened to dump a full load upon us at any moment. The air was damp, warm, and heavy.<p>

The lot was packed with cars. Evacuees from the building were milling around, either talking with each other or getting ready to head home.

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and speed-dialed a number that I had prepared for this occasion. It was Fernando's number.

"Yes?" a voice said.

"Two for pick-up," I answered.

"I'm sending you my best. Don't be put off by them. They're really my best."

"Meaning, you found some schmuck or two who owes you a favor."

"That could be you, tomorrow."

"For what it's worth, thank you."

"You're welcome. Five minutes." The line went dead.

I pointed my focusing rod at the floor boss, who was still holding Echemendía by one arm. "_Ketu_," I whispered, hitting him in the side with a gentle application of my blue freeze ray.

"Unh, what is that?" he said irritably, holding his side, and looking up at the rain. "I feel stiff all of a sudden."

"It's the shock," I said. "You need to sit down and warm up."

"No, no, I need to get Francisco to the paramedics."

"The paramedics are going to come right here with the firemen," I said. "I can just wait with him. Go to your car and warm up, for God's sake."

He rubbed his side again. "Okay, I think I'd better. I feel like my blood just turned to ice."

He had gotten about five or six steps towards his car, and I was just starting to lean back against the building and relax, when all hell broke loose.

Nawang's cavalry had arrived.

They didn't come by car. They came via Nevernever.

One second the parking lot was full of wandering people, the next it was filled with three white court vampires, a lot of screaming and running bystanders, and a ton of bullets. If it seemed like they had appeared from nowhere, it's because for all intents and purposes, they did. Nevernever exists in parallel with our familiar space-time continuum, and the initiated can step back and forth between the two worlds. I can do it myself with a few tries, but I don't dare do it alone. I'm not ready to face Nevernever on my own.

Apparently the vampires didn't feel like they had that problem.

"Shit," I said. It was an understatement.

There wasn't time for me to set up a shield. I pushed Echemendía roughly to the ground and got in front of him, brandishing my focusing rod the way a rose brandishes a thorn at a hungry herd of goats. I was going to have to stick with offensive magic, even though it wasn't my strong suit.

As I focused ahead of me at the trio of vampires, I felt a hand firmly grasp my shoulder.

"What the?" I snapped, just about leaping out of what was left of my skin. Exorcist-like, my head turned backwards of its own accord, or at least it seemed that way. Fear can make you awfully limber.

Looking down at me, and holding a submachine gun in my general direction, but not quite pointed at me, was a person whose gender was questionable at first. His or her face was as pink as mine. Hell, the whole head was pink, and like me and Echemendía, was completely hairless.

Behind this person stood two other pink people, holding submachine guns of their own, posed in a ready stance. They were coldly shifting their gaze between me and the vampires.

"Oh, shit," I groaned. "It's you."

She graced me with a wry smile. It was the mercenary lady and her two angry friends. The ones who had boarded my boat and brought me in to the firm to be branded in the first place. It felt like a lifetime ago, now. They must have taken extra time to evacuate the building.

That's when I noticed that the three of them were wearing bullet-proof vests, and carried extra clips for their guns.

"Stick with us," she said. "We need to get you two to cover behind some cars."

"Come get some," one of her angry friends said, to no one in particular.

Without looking back, the mercenary woman dashed ahead to the second to the last row of cars and ducked down, waddling past several expensive looking automobiles before stopping to check on the vampires. Echemendía and I sprinted behind her, with her two friends spreading out behind us.

The parking lot was mostly empty of bystanders now, except for the unlucky ones who had been shot. Some were still alive, screaming in pain and fear.

_Four armed humans against three vampires,_ I thought to myself. I looked down at my impotent-looking stick and sighed. _Let's face it—three and a half humans._ _Not good._

"Saga!" Isaac called out loudly from the center of the lot. "I know you're here. I can hear your heart beating. I can smell your fear. Come to me, Saga! And I won't kill anyone else tonight."

The mercenary lady looked at me appraisingly. I started to get the idea that she had a plan of attack no matter what I decided.

I laid low, and she quietly shook her head to herself. Okay, the truth was, I was paralyzed with fear.

Isaac grabbed a naked male body near him on the asphalt, and hauled it up. The body was pretty limp, and very pink. At first I thought it was one of the people from the building, but then I understood who it was. It was Elliot. They had brought him with them. Right after giving him a sound beating.

The body began to move of its own accord, slowly.

Isaac smiled frostily at Elliot. "Saga!" he cried out again. "Here's your lover. Want to see him die?"

"I've done it before. It's not that bad," a weak voice carried through the light rain. It was Elliot. He was trying to be brave.

Isaac gave Elliot a shake with one arm, and Elliot went back to being limp again.

"Come to me," Isaac called out. "It's over, Saga. Or he dies."

Stifling the urge to wretch, I stood up from my place behind the car.

"Okay," I said. "I'm coming. Let him go."

All three vampires turned and looked at me, with the same look that they might give a pile of dog crap that they found under the dining room table.

"Closer," Isaac said.

Slowly, deliberately, I sidestepped to my left until I got to an opening between the cars. I placed one foot in front of the other, and pushed myself towards them, even as my body screamed at me to run. As I moved ahead, I could see out of the corner of my eye the three mercenaries shuffling further around the cars, spreading out.

Isaac smiled. "See?" He said. "You can do as you're told."

That's when he grabbed Elliot's head by the chin and pulled it all the way around in a circle. There was a horrible snapping sound, and Elliot suddenly seemed to just shut off.

I had no real control over what I did next. It was as if someone else was guiding me, pulling my strings. I raised up my focusing rod and aimed it dead on Isaac's head. I overloaded myself with power drawn from the ground.

"_Mida_," I cried out.

In Occidental magic, there are four elements. In Oriental, there are five. Metal is one of them.

A deer slug formed at the end of my focusing rod, pulled from the ground energies that flowed through and around me. For the smallest fraction of time, it hung in the air, suspended just in front of me. And then it did what bullets do so well. With a loud _zip_, it fired forward and shot right through Isaac's right eye socket.

He didn't make a sound. He just collapsed down to the ground, as limp as Elliot had been. Black blood leaked onto the ground beneath his head.

The other two vampires raised their guns, aiming at me. But they didn't get the chance to fire. From three directions, they started taking bullets from the mercenaries. Lots of them. Red stains grew at random points in their white suits. The female, Helena, rolled for cover behind a nearby car. Xavier grabbed Isaac and dragged his body unceremoniously in the opposite direction.

The mercenaries kept slipping from car to car, row to row, like lions prowling around, hunting down the best position for an ambush. I couldn't see the other vampires any more, but I guessed that they were doing the same thing.

And I was just standing there like a fat cow, begging to be brought down, too afraid to move. My cerebrum kept worrying that if I moved, that I would just end up some place more dangerous than where I was now. Like, with a vampire right behind me. I risked a quick glance backwards, now that I thought about it.

The sound of gunfire woke me out of my fugue. There was a high-pitched metallic twang as bullets ricocheted off of a nearby car. It stopped as quickly as it had started, but I could see nothing. I had no idea who had fired. I ducked down behind a nearby car and started backpedaling, trying to keep the vampires from outflanking me. The only trouble was, any vampire that could travel through Nevernever could show up anywhere.

In truth, I had no real idea what I was doing. I was counting on the mercenaries to bail me out, and they were counting on me and Echemendía to be their bait goats, which didn't seem like such a helpful idea to me. The grim realization forced itself upon me that I just wasn't ready for this kind of a fight. No one had trained me for this. _It's so ironic_, I thought to myself. _I go through all that trouble to flee from the White Council, and here I am, fighting vampires anyway_. Like it was my goddam destiny.

More gunfire stuttered. This time, there was no sound of bullets ricocheting.

_Offense_, I reminded myself. _You don't have any defense, so quit acting like you do_.

Taking a couple of short breaths to center myself, I slipped off my flip-flops and readjusted my grip on the focusing rod. I looked back at Echemendía. "Come on," I hissed.

Constantly scanning in every direction I could think of, I pressed ahead, letting a charge of magic build up within me, beyond limits that I would normally consider safe. I could always discharge it if I had to.

My knees and back bent, I tiptoed around a Tahoe. There was no one in the next lane. I ran across it, keeping my head low. The smell of acrid smoke came down to me through the increasing rain. The fire I had started in the building was starting to rear its ugly head. Determined to stay on the offensive, I kept myself moving forward, past a cream-colored Lexus, all the way to the tail of a grayish Jaguar, Echemendía trailing behind me.

One of the mercenaries slipped into the lane at the far end of the lot. For a brief moment, he locked his sights on me, and then moved his gun away in another direction.

That's when I saw Helen roll into the lane from between two cars. She pulled out of her tuck and let loose on the merc, who fell backwards before he could take aim at her.

I didn't spend a lot of time aiming my rod at her. "_Mida_," I called out as soon as I was aiming in her general direction. Her thigh suddenly rippled, and a red stain appeared on her white slacks. She gave a short cry out, and rapidly leapt ten feet in the air, returning over the cars from the opposite side of the lane.

Back from the direction we had come, I heard the loud groan of metal being crushed and twisted. I turned my head in time to see a car flipping backwards a couple of rows down, where Echemendía and I had been standing a few heartbeats ago.

"Jesus Christ!" I heard a man shout from nearby the flipped car, followed by the sound of a spray of bullets.

The merc in my lane got back up, looked back towards the noise for a moment or two, and turned to give me the okay sign. He must have taken the vampiress' shot in the vest. Sighing, I shot across the lane, following Helena. When I got to the next lane, she was nowhere to be seen.

Isaac still lay in the road, where Xavier must have left his body. The merc from the other lane poked his head out from between a pair of cars, giving me a questioning glance. I gave him a shrug. Looking around, he crawled out into the lane and waddled past the line of cars, making his way towards me.

When he passed Isaac, the vampire suddenly sat up, one eye open and the other still leaking blood, and grabbed the merc. The merc let out a scream of terror, and suddenly grew unnaturally calm. His submachine gun rolled out of his limp hand and clattered on the ground.

I raised my rod, trying to aim it at Isaac, but the merc was in my way.

Isaac turned his head and spat something on the ground. It made a pinging sound and rolled for a few feet. It was the magical bullet I had shot him with earlier. He turned his head back toward me and flashed an arrogant smile.

The merc's knees buckled. He slowly slid to the ground, moaning.

I took another shot at Isaac, but wasn't as lucky with my aim this time. I got him in the shoulder. It must have hurt him a little, but it didn't take him out. He glared at me hungrily.

"Back! Back!" I hissed at Echemendía. He gave me a look like I was crazy. Gritting his teeth, he turned around and led the way back across the lane. I followed him, mostly walking backwards, my rod turned in Isaac's direction.

_So much for offense_, I thought to myself bitterly. _I've run out of 'fences_.

Echemendía got to the tail of the second car, when he suddenly started backpedaling.

"What?" I was about to say, when Xavier slid over the trunk of the car and grabbed Echemendía by the neck. Echemendía started screeching like a wild animal. I raised up my rod to fire at Xavier, but as with Isaac, I couldn't get a clear shot with someone standing between us. Xavier pulled Echemendía closer to him, caressing his bald head almost lovingly. But the whole time he was looking at me, daring me to do something about it.

"There, there," he said to Echemendía, who had stopped struggling and had grown silent. "There, there."

Grimacing, I raised my rod higher, aiming at Xavier's one exposed eye.

"You're going to lose," he said to me, his pupil enlarging as he pressed his will upon me.

_Piss off_, I thought at him. _I've been dominated by the best, and that ain't you_. Just for spite, I gave him an engaging smile. "_Jalus_," I whispered. A spray of shifting rainbow color spat out from the end of my rod, hitting both vampire and meal full in the face. Xavier grunted and let go of Echemendía, staggering backwards as if he were a little drunk. Echemendía stood where he was, immobile.

"Guess you _can_ hypnotize a vampire," I muttered to myself. "A little."

Xavier suddenly stopped and shook his head stupidly. He raised his head and looked at me, hissing angrily. He reached for his gun.

There was a loud boom. And then another.

Isaac must have shot me in the back. I put my hand to my chest and glanced back over my shoulder. But no one was there, and my body wasn't bloody.

When I looked back again, Xavier was on the ground, face down. His back was a gruesome reddish pulp. On the other side of the lane stood a man, holding a double-barreled shotgun in the crook of his arm. He had no hair, and his head was baby-pink.

"Nace," I said.

He nodded. That's when I noticed that there were three more guys behind him, all armed.

"We're coming in, all the branded," he said to me. "We came to burn the place down. And then the condo."

"You might be too late," I suddenly laughed, looking up at the roof of the building, which was glowing eerily now.

He patted his gun and looked down at Xavier's body. "Next best thing, then," he said.

"Careful," I nodded down at the vampire's corpse. "They can get back up. Especially, if they have help. I've seen it."

He frowned. "How, then?"

"I've heard of a ritual," I said. "But it takes a while. Or it might be enough just to blow the shit out of them."

He took aim at Xavier, and pumped a round of buckshot into the back of his head for good measure.

"Two more," he said to the guys who had come with him.

"You aren't the only branded ones in here," I said. "Be careful of friendly fire."

"Start working on the ritual," he said to me. "We'll take care of the bastards."

I looked down at the body.

"Got a Gigli saw?" I asked Echemendía, but he didn't answer.

Isaac and Helena were calling out to each other now. They had seen the reinforcements arrive, and were retreating to the far end of the lot, shooting short bursts at Nace and friends to hold them at bay. Nace's crew spread out along the cars on the other side of the row, seemingly content to pin them down.

More of us must have been coming, maybe from the other side. Nace was going to wait for them.

The rain fell thick and hard, and the thunder came faster.

A shadow appeared over the center of the lot, hovering over a Cadillac Escalade. I squinted at it through the heavy drops. I put my hand over my eyes to see better.

The raindrops around it seemed to bounce away before they reached it. Like it was shielded in a hemisphere. It suddenly stood taller. It was a man. He held a long, dark staff held in one hand. He took his time, turning its head all around the lot, unconcerned about the spasmodic gunfire all around him.

He said something, but I couldn't hear him over the rain. He was looking in the direction of the vampires. But he was pointing at me.

"Nace!" I screamed. "Run! It's Nawang! Run!"

The shadowy man turned his head over his shoulder and considered me.

The shrill trilling of sirens reached me, coming from several directions.

I grabbed Echemendía by the hand and pulled at him hard, coaxing him to follow me back to the far corner of the burning building, as far away as we could get from the violence. As I crossed the lane, bright headlights from an approaching car lit us up, and the low growl of an un-muffled truck engine drowned out the sound of rain, shouting, and gunfire.

The pickup truck raced forward, almost running us down. Its brakes screeched, and it dropped low to an uncertain stop, blocking my view of the shadowy man. It was a red GMC Canyon Crew Cab, and it hauled a flat trailer with a pair of lawn mowers and other landscaping equipment. A magnetic business sign was stuck unevenly to the door, the words "SPEEDY-WEEDY LANDSCAPING" blurred by the rain's runoff. The passenger side rear door opened, and a gaunt Latino with maybe two teeth looked me and Echemendía over uncertainly. He was wearing scraps for clothes and his fingers were black from working with greasy machinery. The irony was, he looked a hell of a lot better than I did, if you didn't count the teeth.

"Ride?" he said haltingly. I could hear loud Spanish being spoken deeper inside the cab, but I couldn't understand it over the engine noise.

I pushed Echemendía towards him unceremoniously, who clumsily hauled himself up into the truck with the help of the toothless Latino. I opened the front passenger door and pushed my way in, surprised to see Fernando already sitting in front. He slid to the middle and beckoned me in.

"Jorge," he said, "meet my friends, the Alvarez brothers. Enrique in the back seat, and Nacio here."

I closed the door behind me, and the truck exploded to life, yanking us forward and out of the parking lot, the rain forming thick globs on the windshield, even as the wipers ran at full tilt. I turned my head and looked back at the lot. "Run, Nace, run," I whispered.

A bright flash of yellow and orange light from the center of the lot momentarily blinded me. I saw cars flying ten or twenty feet up in the air, flipping around slowly before crashing heavily back to solid ground. The ground shook, and a loud _boom_ went through my chest. The back window of the pickup suddenly cracked diagonally from end to end.

"Was that a bomb?" Fernando said, wide-eyed.

Nacio and Enrique were yelling excitedly at each other in Spanish. They were talking over each other so quickly that I couldn't understand more than one in ten words.

"Something like that," I raised my voice over the Latinos while still staring back at the parking lot. "Sorry, Nace," I whispered. Smoke was billowing up into the darkness from the lot, and several cars were on fire.

"Think it took out the people you're running from?" Fernando turned back to me.

I shook my head. "It'll just delay them."

"You got tough enemies, then. Echemendía? Are you holding up back there? You look like hell."

Echemendía was silent for a while. He was staring back at the lot, like the rest of us. "I'm not important," he said finally. He looked at his hands, turning them to all sides, just as if he had never seen them before. I understood. I felt like doing the same thing.

We passed by a pair of police cars and a fire truck on our way out to LeJune Road, their lights ablaze and their sirens wailing. Just like them to show up too late to help. More emergency vehicles followed them in dribs and drabs.

In the far distance, the firm glowed with fire. I hoped it would burn to the ground before the fire trucks got set up. But I probably wouldn't be that lucky.

Still, I was alive. I had taken out Bouknight, which had been the only thing that I cared about accomplishing. And for what it was worth, I had saved one other person.

But I had also lost Nace and—Buddha help me—the mercenaries who had screwed me in the first place. Dammit, I had lost Elliot. I wasn't strong enough to save them. Maybe I wasn't brave enough.

That was going to change.

It _had_ to change.

I was running out of people to rescue.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen**

"Saga," Echemendía said, his unsteady voice barely audible over the cracking and rumbling of the truck's engine.

I turned back to peer at him. He looked worse than ever, his face haunted and his eyes hollow.

"How did it end?"

"I—I fired Bouknight," I said. I didn't mention the demon. There were other people in the car, and you just didn't talk about your day negotiating with demons in polite company.

He stared back at me, a knowing look in his eyes. "Thank you," he said to me.

"We're not safe yet," I said. "This might all have been for nothing."

He shook his head and pressed his raw hand to his chest. "Better to die a free man than continue living like that. The things I saw, Saga. The things I did for them—"

Echemendía sat in silence for a while, while the Alvarez brothers started up their animated arguing again. He was reliving it all in his mind. I didn't know if that was a wise thing for him to do or not. There was no undoing any of the past.

"Elliot is dead," he said to me.

I nodded.

"I was always so jealous of him," he mused. "I don't know why. He was just as bad off as I was."

"He had that effect on people," I said. "But he seemed like a good guy to me. He'll be missed."

Echemendía closed his eyes. "My God, my family. I haven't spoken with them in weeks. Do you think my wife divorced me?"

Fernando turned back to look at the candidate. "They've mostly stayed in their house," he answered. "They wouldn't talk with reporters."

"I have to call them. I have to find out if they are okay."

"Just as soon as we get you to safety," Fernando said.

"They're more important than me. My children, my God, I don't want them to find out what happened to me. I don't want them to be exposed to the horror of it."

Fernando looked back at Echemendía sympathetically. None of us said anything.

* * *

><p>About twenty minutes into our drive down LeJune, I began to suspect that we were being followed. A white Mercedes sedan was weaving around aggressively a few cars behind us. Not that that was uncommon in Miami, but still, still—a white Mercedes.<p>

All around us, the traffic had slowed to a crawl as the rain whipped around us, cutting our visibility to almost nothing.

"Guys," I said.

Fernando followed my gaze. "Punch it," he ordered Nacio in Spanish. He turned to me. "Seat belts," he said.

I was still reaching back for the belt when the pickup thundered forward. Nacio whipped the steering wheel to the left, and we went over the median and into oncoming traffic. The approaching cars blared their horns at us and pulled to their right, making room for us. None of the oncoming drivers panicked. This was Miami. They had seen it all before.

Enrique yelled at Nacio, pointing to the east. Nacio yelled back, pointing south. I looked at Fernando quizzically. He just shrugged and smiled. "It always works out in the end," he said. "You'll see."

The white Mercedes began to shrink in the distance at first, but then, it, too, whipped out into our improvised lane and accelerated.

"They're coming," I barked.

Improbably, the pickup went even faster, as Nacio dodged and slid from lane to lane, shouting at his brother all the while. I couldn't see anything ahead of us at all. I didn't know how Nacio could escape from crashing. He must have had the Force. I was momentarily tempted to use my third eye to see if he was really a fey, but I didn't do it. It occurred to me that he might turn out to just be a regular guy. Which would mean that instead of being omniscient or charmed, that he was actually just plain crazy.

As we got near the Dixie Highway, Nacio twirled the steering wheel to the left and drove us into the Merrick Park shopping complex. The trailer slid out from under us to our right, making the truck fishtail, but Nacio just yelled through it with his brother, who was pointing back the way we had come. The truck righted, and plowed forward. Nacio laid down on the horn as we went, but there were no people in the side street, not with the rain and the late hour.

We weaved through the complex's through street, gliding past parked cars, rolling over curbs, spraying huge gouts of storm runoff water in both directions. As we jetted out of the complex, we whipped to the right onto Ponce DeLeon, aiming for the Dixie Highway again.

I looked back and saw the white Mercedes shoot out onto Ponce the way we had come. We hadn't made any noticeable headway against them. I thought I saw the shapes of three people in the car when they were backlit by the headlights of a car behind them, but I couldn't be certain in the gloom and the thundering rain.

Three vampires, two of them shot badly, yet still walking. This wasn't going to end well. One way, or the other.

It only took a few moments for us to approach the intersection to the Dixie Highway. It was jammed with stopped cars, in both directions.

"Car crashes," Fernando muttered unhappily. "Always when it rains."

Enrique raised his voice even louder and spoke even faster. His words were a blur of Cuban Spanish. He was pointing at the Metrorail, which paralleled the highway on our side of the intersection. The concrete rail itself was suspended thirty feet up in the air, supported by a string of reinforced concrete pillars. Nacio irritably shouted back, waving his hand around. But Enrique didn't back down this time, and pointed again at the rail. Growling, Nacio swerved the truck to the left, diving the pickup onto a bike path that wove its way between the Metrorail's pillars, right underneath the track.

The path wasn't meant for cars, let alone trucks. I hoped that no pedestrians would be on it in these weather conditions. Lightning flashed in front of us, turning the city a brief shade of pure white, before returning us to the wet darkness. The sky boomed.

Behind us, I could see from the strobe of cloudlight the white Mercedes sliding sideways past the entrance to the bike path, hydroplaning across the pooling water on the road. And then the entrance was long behind us.

Enrique and Echemendía held watch out back for our tail, while the three of us in the front seat squinted ahead, looking for anything that might block our path. We wove back and forth around the pillars where the bike path took us, sometimes dropping into a long parking lot where there was a Metrorail station, sometimes jumping across an intersection.

"They're back again!" Echemendía yelled. A metallic pinging sound came from the back of the truck near the roof. Enrique suddenly swung his head back to where the sound came from, a look of worry on his face. He poked his brother in the shoulder and said something, and Nacio nodded, a sudden look of seriousness crossing his face.

He turned to me, pointing at the floor at my feet. "Under the seat," he said in Spanish. With his left hand, he opened the window next to me. Rain and wind gushed into the truck, engulfing me.

Blinking through the water, I reached under and pulled something long, metallic and cold out from under my seat. It was an AK-47. I had never held one in my hands before. I pulled out the magazine and glanced at it. It was full.

Another round of bullets sprayed the truck.

"Why isn't the rear window cracking?" I asked Fernando.

"The gate on the back of the trailer may be deflecting some of them," he shrugged.

Enrique was already leaning out the side of his window on the driver's side of the truck. Water ran over him and his gun, and the truck bucked and heaved over the uneven path, but he held a steady aim. It occurred to me that he must have done this before.

He fired a few rounds, and the Mercedes jinked to the right. Enrique looked back at me impatiently. He shouted something to me. I couldn't hear him over the noise of the truck, but I picked up on his sense of urgency. I unbuckled my seat belt and hung out of the window, trying to get a bead on the car. I had never fired a gun before. I hoped it didn't have a safety, because I didn't know where to look for one.

I gripped the gun hard and squeezed the trigger when the car was reasonably in the direction I was pointing the gun. The gun took on a life of its own, bucking and thrashing in my arms, trying to escape my grip, like a wild animal. I couldn't see well enough to tell if I had hit anything, although the car jinked back to the left again.

Through the rain, I could see someone in the Mercedes hanging out of the passenger window, just like I was, holding a submachine gun that was aimed in my general direction. I heard what sounded like a loud zipper opening go by my head. Lots of zippers.

I ducked back inside instinctively, and Enrique yelled at me, pointing animatedly at my window.

Gritting my teeth, I pushed myself back out. Another series of zips went by me, and I felt a jab of pain in my left bicep. I fired back, trying to keep some measure of control over the AK-47, but without much success. Half of my bullets probably shot forty-five degrees up in the air by the time I took my finger off the trigger.

"That does it," I shouted in frustration.

I pulled back into the cab and threw the gun onto the floor of my seat in disgust. Now both the brothers were yelling at me in Spanish, but I ignored them. I grabbed my backpack and pulled out my focusing rod where I had stowed it when I first climbed in.

Holding it tightly, I leaned back out the window.

_Technically_, I wasn't supposed to practice magic around the uninitiated. There was some kind of rule the White Council had about that. Something about secrecy and lying low and—something. I had already broken the rule several times over in our shootout in the parking lot back at the firm. But I could always decide to stop. I could pick up the gun and do things the hard way from here on out.

_Screw it_, I thought. _I'm not a member of the Council, anyway_.

I aimed the focusing rod in the general direction of the Mercedes. More bullets zipped by me, only missing me because the trail had twisted to the left, passing once more under the concrete supports for the tracks.

"_Nyima_," I called out, firing a line of heat at the car. The hood of the Mercedes developed a glow, and a circle of paint peeled off. I held the ray going, blasting the car's engine with fire.

It wasn't going well for me. The pickup truck bounced and jinked too much for me to hold a steady beam on the hood. And all the running rainwater on the ground under the pickup truck was playing havoc with my connection to the fields of magic beneath the earth. I could pull the energy, but only a fraction of what I would normally channel. My beam bounced around, sometimes hitting the hood, sometimes arcing through the windshield and maybe hitting the vampires themselves. It would anger them, but I doubted that it would take them out.

I gritted my teeth again, determined to hold the beam steadier.

That's when I felt a sudden stab of pain in my neck. Isaac had scored a hit on me. The lightning flashed again, and I could now clearly see him grinning excitedly. He was enjoying the chase. It's what vampires were built to do. I could feel the blood running down my neck and chest, diluted by the torrent of rain.

Closing my eyes for a moment, I centered myself, pulling at the flow of magic as hard as I could. I opened my eyes and this time pointed the beam of fire downwards, at the Mercedes' front tire. It exploded, sounding like a shotgun. Pieces of rubber and metal shredded and flew up into the air. The front of the car lurched down, and sparks flew out from the tire's rim.

The white Mercedes weaved back and forth and then spun around several times, hydroplaning over the manicured grass that bordered the bike path. The car flipped, flinging Isaac high into the air.

Suddenly the vampires were gone, lost in the distance, concealed by the sheets of rain.

I slid back into the truck, panting, holding a hand to my neck.

Fernando looked at me, his eyes wide with worry. "Jorge," he said in Spanish. "That looks terrible. I think they nicked your artery."

My eyes closed of their own accord. I felt tired and weak.

Leaning down, I opened up my backpack and rummaged through it, pulling out my last healing potion. I had just taken one an hour or two ago. It was a boneheaded idea to drink another one so soon. But my wound wasn't going to close without help. I popped off the stopper and poured the potion down my throat, gulping at it.

A stab of pain hit my stomach. My body was fed up with the constant feed of potions, and was letting me know about it. I think I might have vomited it back up.

I slumped over, my head in Fernando's lap, and blacked out.

* * *

><p>When I woke up, I thought that I was out at sea in a gale. I felt like I was rolling and rocking violently. I involuntarily vomited again. Looking around blearily, I realized that I was still in the pickup truck. I had been curled in the fetal position on the floor in front of the passenger seat. I had been lying on top of the AK-47, and it was digging into my raw skin painfully.<p>

The Alvarez brothers were practically screeching at each other. Their voices had gone up an octave or two since I had passed out. I put my hand to my neck. I felt wet and sticky, but the blood wasn't spurting out uncontrollably. If I found a nice bed to crawl into, I might live.

Weakly, I pulled myself up into my seat, trying to look around. The rain was still falling, and everything was completely black in all directions outside the truck except straight ahead. And even that was just a watery blur through the windshield.

I touched Fernando's arm and he jumped. He had been looking through the back window, which was missing. "Jorge!" he shouted. "You were dead!"

I shook my head. "No, just passed out. How long?"

He didn't say anything for a moment, just stared at me in disbelief. "Maybe twenty minutes. We're on Key Biscayne. We're not far from the safe house. But they caught up with us again."

I looked back through the blackness. The car behind us was a Nissan GT-R, maybe a blue one. The vampires must have pirated it from the highway. With all the stalled traffic, they could take their pick.

Damn.

"Where exactly are we?" I asked.

"We just turned into Crandon Park," Echemendía answered me. "We crashed through the gate into Crandon Gardens."

Before I was born, it was the Crandon Park Zoo. During the daytime, you could still see some of the leftovers from when animals used to be held here.

Since it had been converted to gardens, it had never been all that popular a place, for either the locals or tourists. Why walk through a stonily silent garden that looked like a closed down zoo, when you could walk a hundred yards east and hit pristine white beaches with groves of swaying coconut trees? There had always been something creepy about the Gardens, a vibe that warned me to go elsewhere. The place made me feel like I was about to get mugged by the ghosts of dispossessed mammals.

Inside, the Crandon Gardens were a maze of winding asphalt walkways, all wide enough for a truck to drive through. At slow speeds. In the daylight. With good weather. We were experiencing none of those things. Yet none of that seemed to matter to the Alvarez brothers. Nacio just kept working the steering wheel back and forth, oblivious to the fact that we were badly fishtailing every time he made another turn. My stomach churned out acid, and my head ached badly.

Behind us, the GT-R made a bad turn, and took a different fork in the path from us. Or maybe they were predicting where we were going, and were going to cut us off. It was so dark outside, I had no idea where we were in the Gardens. We could have been on the moon.

Nacio turned his head, glancing at where the GT-R had gone, and worked his jaw thoughtfully. He made one last hard turn to the right onto what must have been a narrow footpath. Scrub trees scraped along the sides of the truck.

And suddenly we were out in the clear. In the lightning and rain, I made out tall palm trees dotting the sparkling sand, and could see the rough waves of the Atlantic rolling ashore to claim the heavy runoff of rainwater that ran down the sloping beach. Nacio curved to the right and coasted to a halt. Before we had stopped, Enrique had opened his door and rolled out onto the sand, hooking his gun over his shoulder in one fluid motion. Nacio shouted something at Fernando, who turned his head back through the gaping back window of the truck.

"Son of a bitch," he said. He pointed at my door. "Out," he said. "And give me the gun."

I jumped out onto the sand with my bare feet and sank down into the grit past my ankles. The sand was so saturated with runoff, it had become almost mud. "Yuk," I muttered. Fernando splashed me as he landed right behind me.

"Cojones," he spat, looking down at his expensive leather shoes. "The things I do for friends." He splashed past me to the back of the truck, where I could hear a pair of engines revving.

I trod through the wet sand, following Fernando. The trailer's gate had been lowered to the ground, and one of the riding lawn mowers was crouching in the water. Enrique was up on the other one that was still in the trailer, bringing it to life.

Fernando took the seat of the lawn mower that was already on the sand, and beckoned to me to stand behind him. As I got closer to them, I realized what industrial-strength monsters the mowers actually were. They were more like small, high-octane tractors than anything else, with rear wheels that were easily two and a half feet in radius. They were built for Florida landscapers, who have to cut the grass anywhere. And Florida's natural state of existence is swamp.

The other lawnmower slid down into the sand, Enrique at the wheel. Echemendía climbed up behind him, gripping Enrique's shoulders tightly. Nacio closed the trailer's gate and looked us over, nodding. He turned and ran back to the truck, which shortly afterwards drove off to the north.

"He going to go back into the gardens and try to lure them away, if he can," Fernando shouted. "They have to be very close." He gunned the engine and we shot southward, water and globs of sand spraying high into the air behind us.

Soon after we had pulled away, I could see the GT-R race out onto the beach. It turned towards us, its engine revved high. For a second, the Nissan leapt ahead, but then lurched to a stop. Its street clearance was just too low for the beach, and it had dug itself into the wet sand.

Three vampires opened the doors and got out, the bodies of the car's original passengers slumping to the wet ground behind them. One of them raised his gun, but didn't bother to fire, with the swirling wind whipping around each of us. All they could do was watch us as we sped into the steamy murk.

* * *

><p>"No lights!" Fernando hissed in Spanish as we pushed our way over the threshold of the safe house. Enrique looked back at Fernando, and slowly lowered his hand from the light switch, leaving the house in a state of semi-darkness. He peered back out the open door, until I shut it behind me.<p>

We were in a house with direct beach access, one of the few on Key Biscayne. I wondered who Fernando had borrowed it from. Maybe it was someone who had voted for Echemendía. The house was two stories tall, and on the beach side it was made entirely of glass. If any of us lived through the night, the view in the morning would be fantastic.

I walked out to the living room and stood there, shivering in the air conditioning, my arms folded across my chest. I was staring out the huge glass window at the gloom beyond. The storm was receding. But it wasn't done.

Francisco walked up to me, his leather shoes squeaking and cracking. "Jorge? What are you thinking?" he asked me.

I looked him in the eye, almost. "Are there any flip-flops in this house that I can borrow?" I said.

"Don't go out. Stay with us. We'll make our last stand here, if we have to."

I cast my eyes around the living room. "No defenses here," I answered.

He looked out the glass window with me. "I know," he answered. He stood by me, quiet for a while before he worked his way up to speaking again. "Jorge? Who are they? _What_ are they? Those are not normal people following us."

"No," I lowered my head. "Not normal at all. Fernando, they're—they're highly motivated terrorists."

He frowned disapprovingly. "I saw one of them in the parking lot. The back of his head had been shot out, but he was still up and walking. Jorge, there are stories we have—"

I sighed. He really wanted to know, and I owed it to him to tell him the truth. "I'm not sure you would believe, Fernando, but what the hell. They're vampires."

"Really? Like in the stories?"

"Really. Not quite like the stories, but enough so that it doesn't matter."

"And you are going out there with them?"

I nodded.

"I suppose it's been nice knowing you."

"Find some flip-flops," I said. "I'm going to pull them away."

He sighed. "As I said. Nice knowing you."

While he was gone to sack the house, I sat down cross-legged, controlling my breathing. I held my hands out in front of me, palms down, and then moved them into the Dharmachakra position—symbolizing the setting in motion of the Wheel of Law. I chanted regularly, focusing on myself—my body, my mind, my spirit. I pulled into myself, regulating my heartbeat, the flow of blood and fluid, the tension in my muscles. "_Kasa_," I chanted, "_Kasa_, _Kasa_, _Kasa_." I pictured myself moving with lightning speed. I pulled at the magical fields around me, at the energies and living flows, and grafted them onto my body, making myself faster. It would only last for an hour or so before I became exhausted, and wouldn't be as powerful as my Dancing Tiger potion. But it might be enough to give me a little parity. It was only fair. Isaac Wright knew magic. Why shouldn't I be as fast as a vampire?

I only had to wait for a couple of minutes for Fernando to return. He dropped a pair of flip-flops on the floor. They were a woman's, with sequins. And they were too big for my feet. He shrugged half-apologetically. "Want me to keep looking?" he asked.

I shook my head, smiling wryly.

I lifted up my backpack, poured my collection of phurbu daggers out on a couch, and shouldered it. In my left hand I gripped my focusing rod, and slipped my feet into the borrowed footwear. We shook hands. "Sorry for all the trouble," I said. "I had hoped it wouldn't be like this."

"If you live, you will owe me."

I nodded.

He opened the door for me, and I walked back out into the rain.

Rivulets of water ran over my feet as I slogged my way onto the beach. I did not sink into the wet sand. My magic held me up. I had never done that before, and it wasn't intentional, but I wasn't going to question it. The ocean waves roared rhythmically, boldly and yet also peacefully. I came to a stop halfway between the waves and the houses. All I was missing was a poncho to flap around me in the wind to look totally cowboy.

I stood alone, waiting for the vampires. They had been walking up the beach, checking each house along the way for signs of us before they spotted me. For a moment, they stood still, sensing an ambush. But none would come. I had no one to back me up.

Maybe someday that had to change, too.

Maybe in a few minutes, it wouldn't matter.

I waited as they walked towards me, their feet sinking into the sand. Isaac and Xavier seemed to walk much more stiffly than Helena, and Isaac's right eye was still closed tight. Our fight might have gotten to them, a little, too. I could only hope.

Isaac pulled his submachine gun off of his shoulder and pointed it at me, but I just waited for them to get into earshot.

"Isaac Wright," I said. "By the Seelie Accords, I challenge thee to a duel to the death."

He stopped, nonplussed. "And who is thy second?" he asked.

"I choose Kalden Nawang. Of course, we will need to go and fetch him," I smiled.

"Nawang? Are you crazy? And if I refuse, and simply shoot you?"

"Then ye shall be branded as cowards, and shunned by all."

Isaac laughed first, and then the others joined him. "Dead wizards tell no tales."

"Sometimes we do," I said.

"Powerful wizard," he took two steps closer to me. "Why don't you make me tremble?"

I just smiled at him.

"Why don't you give me your death curse, wizard? You _can_ do that, can't you? Something so simple as that?"

"Why would I? I plan to outlive you," I replied coldly. And, I didn't say, only initiated wizards are told how to perform a death curse. It can only be cast once, and it turns out that apprentices can't be trusted not to try practicing it. But Isaac knew that. It was why he was trash talking me, and getting away with it.

The White Court vampires laughed again, oozing self-assured arrogance. But Xavier's jaw seemed to open badly when he laughed, like it was hanging a little loosely. He glared at me when he noticed me staring at it a little queasily.

"Dorje Saga, for your crimes against Nawang and against the firm, we sentence you to death," Isaac said.

He began to lift up his gun.

"_Anil_," I shouted, pointing my focusing rod at the wet sand between us. A heavy blast of air smacked the sand, smashing it up into the vampires' faces in wet, gritty clumps, momentarily blinding them.

I ran down the beach, past the safe house, being careful not to look in its direction. With a little luck, they would follow me and forget about the others. Maybe I was all they really cared about killing, anyway. My feet skipped over the top of the sand, helping me to run as if I were running on gravel.

I risked a quick look back and saw the three vampires running after me. But their feet were digging deep into the sand, slowing them down and making the effort of running much harder. Even vampires have to get physically tired, don't they? I hoped so.

Bullets whizzed by me, but that was okay with me. The harder they ran after me, the harder it would be for them to aim accurately at me. And every bullet that didn't hit me was a round that they would never get back. Eventually they would run out, and then at least two of them would be stuck with hand to hand combat.

"_Ketu_," I heard a voice cry out over the rain behind me. I felt a sudden stab of cold hit me between the shoulder blades, sapping my strength. I stumbled and fell, my hands sinking deeply into the sand, my nose inches from the ground. I had to concentrate to keep myself from letting go of my focusing rod.

_Okay_, I thought. _Strategy number two_.

My arms and legs coated with slimy grit, I painstakingly extracted myself from the sand and sprinted back to the line of beach houses along the shore, bullets following my trail. It was a wonder that they hadn't scored a direct hit on me yet, but I suspected that they were more tired than they outwardly appeared.

I dodged between a pair of sea grapes and whipped around, crouching low. The three vampires were still together, slogging through the sand about fifty yards away.

Breathing heavily, I aimed my focusing rod at Xavier, who must have been the weakest of the three, and fired a pair of summoned bullets at him. The first missed, but the second hit him in the stomach. He doubled over, stopped in his tracks. Not dead, but at least delayed.

Isaac and Helena were now about twenty-five yards away, their feet bare. They must have ditched their shoes in the sandy muck. It was time to run again. I fled between the two houses, emerging out on a quiet residential street. Along the beach side, huge zero-lot-line houses squatted like Easter Island moai. On the other side of the street were more modest concrete block homes with tile roofs and larger lots. The heavy rain had not drained very well from the street—a half-inch of water pooled across the road, slowly seeping back into the sandy soil.

It wasn't the ideal place for a firefight, with the potential for so much collateral damage. But then again, nowhere on the island would be, unless I could make it back up to Crandon or down to Bill Baggs State Park. Both were out of my reach, now.

Racing about a half-block further south, I ripped my windshield shade off of my backpack and threw it on the flooded ground in the middle of the street, letting it pop open into a circle. Above me, the dim yellow light of a mercury street light which was affixed to a wooden pole turned the steady rain into a shower of refractive crystal, and bathed me in ambient light. Before the shade even finished touching the shallow water, I jumped into it, sat cross-legged, took a deep breath, and began to chant, trying to ignore the cold water pooling around the bottom of my rump. At least I was wearing swim trunks.

Helena was the first to emerge from between the houses, Isaac the second. She raised her gun to fire at me, but hesitated. I was sitting in the road, alone, under the street's primary source of artificial light, and wasn't making any effort to flee any more.

I serenely kept chanting, my focusing rod in my left hand, and my thunderbolt scepter in the other. The rain slowly stopped hitting me, even though a ring of heavy raindrops were splashing down into the runoff in a perfect circle about seven feet around from where I was sitting.

Helena walked closer while Isaac took cover behind a parked car, his gun aimed straight at me. He wouldn't miss this time. And neither would Helena.

But I ignored them, and held my chant. The more time they gave me, the stronger my magic would be.

Helena grinned fiercely at me, lifted her gun, and let loose at the same time as Isaac. A storm of lead bullets rushed towards me at close to supersonic speed, passing through the raindrops.

Let me explain something about Oriental magic, and how it interacts with the world around us. My philosophy about space and time says that matter is where it is because that's where it thinks it's supposed to be. When I build a magical shield, it doesn't move matter by force, like Western shields do. Instead, it convinces matter that it's in the wrong place, and that matter moves itself. It's very Zen, but it works for me. Sometimes. I'd never tried it bullets.

I told you I could make a shield, didn't I? I just need a little time to concentrate.

The bullets flew at me from two directions. No, make that three. Xavier had finally caught up with the others. Behind me, I could hear the mass of metal bits digging into the street, ricocheting up in many directions. But within the boundary of my shield, no bullets existed. I was telling them that they needed to be somewhere else.

Helena's gun suddenly clicked and fell silent, then Isaac's, then Xavier's.

Isaac stood up from his hiding place behind the parked car and threw his gun down on the ground in disgust. He glared at me with his one good eye. I gave him a wry grin. From my perspective, every moment that the vampires were focused on me, they weren't focused on anyone else. I was okay with that, even if we all knew the final consequences of my strategy. You have to die, sometime.

The three of them gathered in a semicircle around the front of me. Helena launched herself at me, but was thrown backwards about ten feet by my shield, the victim of her own power. At the same time, Xavier picked up a rock from the ground and threw it at me, but like the bullets, it passed into the shield and reappeared behind me, fragmenting on the street.

Isaac raised his hand and said something inaudible, and a line of oily fire spurted from his hand at me, spreading across my shield like an octopus' arms against a submarine's window. I could feel my shield's strength lowering a little as it absorbed the power of his spell. I calmly continued my chanting, restoring the shield's power little by little.

Yelling wildly, Isaac raised his arms in the air and let out a massive hex, blowing out the transformer on the next pole down, and plunging the street into near darkness. The dull, wispy glow of the low-lying black clouds reflecting Miami's lights were our only source of illumination. Isaac's hex hadn't really achieved anything. He was frustrated, and trying to intimidate me. Hell, he didn't need to hex anything to do that. He just needed to be on the same street as me.

"You can't stay in there forever," Isaac hissed.

"No," I agreed, taking a short break from my chanting, now that my shield was as strong as I knew how to make it. "Though I wish I had brought a Port-a-Potty." Still, he was right. I wouldn't be able to keep it up at full strength forever. I just didn't have the bandwidth to keep pulling enough power for that.

His expression as angry as a samurai's, Isaac marched through the rain over to the defunct street light and placed his hands against it, judging its strength. Helena joined him and together they pushed at the pole.

I resumed my chant.

The wooden pole slowly bent towards me, looking a lot like the arm of a catapult. The darkened lamp moved directly over me, and then past me. With a sudden snap, the power lines running past the pole failed, whipped through the air, and settled on the ground, half-immersed in the pooling rainwater. The pole bent even further now, creaking and groaning horribly. Suddenly a massive _boom_ erupted from the base of the pole as it snapped away from its foundation. The heavy pole dropped straight down on top of me, bounced twice off of the top of my shield, and slowly slid to the ground.

Throbbing pain coursed through me, and I dropped my thunderbolt scepter into the shallow water. Snot dripped out of my nose. My shield had held, but it just wasn't strong enough to hold back that much weight, not without feeding some of the punch it absorbed back to me. I felt bruises growing along my body. It wouldn't be long before my lovely pink color would be more of a brownish black, on every part of my body.

Lightning shot through the sky, illuminating the vampires. They were standing near the edge of my shield, mere feet from me. And they had lined up to lift the light pole back up into the air. They were going to ram me with it until either my shield failed, or I passed out.

My breath coming out raggedly, I did what I could to recenter myself, to calm my nerves and locate my connection to the flows that ran beneath me. But it was hard. I hurt terribly, and I was dog tired.

Isaac literally flashed another grin at me as another stroke of lightning hopped across the sky. He had treed his quarry. The hunter had won, the prey had been trapped. All was right with the universe.

I had no death curse. I didn't know how to make one.

So I had to invent my own.

I stood to full height, but I was still shorter than even Helena. My shield was losing power, and there was nothing I could do about it. I held out my cylindrical wooden focusing rod in my left hand, its ends pointed to the left and right.

It was a lot like the wooden light pole. They had a natural affinity to begin with. With a whisper, I strengthened it. It didn't take much. The focusing rod amplified everything, and establishing affinity was just another kind of magic.

I took a last look at the vampires. They had the pole raised up to chest level, and were about to lift it over their heads before letting it crash down upon my shield. I leaned back my head and let my awareness fall deep below me, into the earth. Into the flows that wound around me and Isaac. Into the power. I called. It answered. It wasn't much. A trickle. But it would be enough.

I said my name. "_Dorje_," I cried out. Thunderbolt. Power ran through my body, through my arm, through my left hand. A heavy bolt of electricity poured out of me and into my focusing rod. It exploded in my hand, violently shredding skin and muscle off my palm.

Simultaneously, the light pole blew up like a bomb in the vampires' arms. Shreds of splinters from the pole blew around us and past us, carried by the shockwave of the explosion. I was knocked off my feet by it, my shield completely gone.

I slowly and painfully sat up. A half-dozen large wooden splinters were sticking out of me, deeply embedded into tissue and muscle. My left hand was dripping blood into the black water, a mangled mess. I was glad that it was dark out. I didn't want to see it.

The three vampires lay on the ground where the explosion had carried them. Two of the bodies lay still, but Isaac's body was moving slightly. He was crying out piteously.

I held my right hand up in the air, although it took effort to do it. "_Skamar_," I whispered hoarsely. A small, dim light appeared over Isaac, letting me see him a bit better. He was a disaster. All three of them were.

His body was perforated with hundreds of long wooden splinters. They weren't all deeply embedded in him, but his body was bleeding profusely out of the thousand cuts he bore, turning his white suit into a deep crimson.

And a large splinter had shot upwards into his left eye.

He bleated loudly in his intense suffering, but somehow managed to sit up. He looked like he had mutated into some horrible mockery of an inverted hedgehog.

And then he grew strangely silent, turning his head from side to side.

"Bastard!" he cried out to the darkness, spitting bits of wood out of his mouth. "You think this is enough to finish me? You think blinding me will stop me from seeking you out? I'm a _vampire_, you little shit! I can smell your blood! I can hear your heart beating!"

Unsteadily, he stood up.

_Buddha's 'nads_. I couldn't believe it.

Leaving my pack and circle in the water, I slowly pushed myself up and got to my feet. The rain actually increased, but I was grateful for it. With luck, the sound of it plunking into the puddled water around us would help to mask the sound of me moving.

I looked around, not having a plan of where to go. I had long since run out of ideas. With nothing else to do, I sloshed my way towards the closest house on the beach side. It was two stories, but the second story was recessed from the road, leaving a ledge of roof on the street side. An SUV was parked near the house. Using only my right hand for grip, I climbed on top of the SUV's hood, and then its roof. With a Herculean effort, I dragged myself onto the house's roof ledge, and crawled as far as I could along the length of the barrel tile away from the SUV before my body gave out of its own accord. Only the remaining magic that sped my body had made it possible to make the short trek at all.

When I looked back out into the street, the other two vampires had stood up uncertainly, vaguely facing my direction, water cascading around their feet. Isaac was slowly shuffling directly toward me, turning his head back and forth, trying to sense me over the pounding of the rain.

I was done with moving. My body had quit on me. I couldn't say much better for my magic. But the house _was_ on dry ground. It did help me to tap into the flows more easily than I was able to out on the street. Energy slowly flowed back into me, but my capacity to hold it was shot. The agony rippling across my body made concentration impossible. I wouldn't be able to cast more than the most rudimentary spells now. Only something basic. Something fundamental.

I closed my eyes.

The muffled sound of a ringtone burst from Isaac's right pocket.

"What the?" he said, reaching his hand down. "I hexed it."

"Yess…" I whispered hoarsely. "You did hex it." A wry grin bubbled up to my face. More power flowed into me, called by my anger, and my will.

Other cell phones started ringing, the discordant music coming from Xavier and Helena, who stood a few feet behind their leader. Isaac turned his head behind him at the others, then back at me. He listened to the muddy water that sloshed around his bare feet, and realization dawned upon him.

"Run!" he screeched at the others. He took a long leap at my perch, trying to evade the standing water.

My power surged, and I felt myself reverse-hexing everything within a hundred yards, including the transformer atop the nearby pole. The one with the severed power line dangling down into the water. It snapped back to life. The broken mercury street lamp that lay in the water suddenly blazed of its own accord with white light.

Isaac had a leaping distance that would have made an Olympian green with snakelike envy. Hell, it would have impressed a tiger. But it wasn't quite enough. His hand grasped the lip of my rooftop perch, but couldn't find purchase, and he couldn't see. With a primal scream, he slid back down to the water, his legs kicking at air. When he touched the water, he seemed to seize up, and fell face forward into the puddle. His body shook uncontrollably for a few seconds and then became still, as still as Xavier and Helena, who had never had a chance to flee the street. Oily black smoke began to issue from their bodies, as if they had been machines with hydraulics and gears instead of flesh and—and blood.

They were all dead. Not vampire-dead but dead-dead.

* * *

><p>I had used my magic to kill.<p>

Yes, _technically_ I had killed vampires, who are not considered sacred life by the White Council. _Technically_, it was self-defense. _Technically_, I was off the hook from any wizard who might ever come looking to see what had happened here.

But I had killed, by my own hand.

I hadn't planned on anything or anyone dying when all this started with a simple promise to a selkie. Not Elliot, not vampires, not a DA, not the branded, no one.

I had been so naïve. I needed to grow up.

Especially because it wasn't over. My fight with Kalden Nawang was only beginning.

He owed me. He owed all of us.

I closed my eyes again, finally giving in to the midnight of my mind.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen**

Three days had passed since the destruction of Isaac and his brethren.

The first day I spent in the hospital and in long discussions with the police, who had been summoned by the neighborhood residents. They had found my fake Chinese passport and assumed that I was Xao Yin. I didn't try to correct them. They asked me what I was doing with the deceased individuals, and I told them I didn't know who they were or why they had shot at me. I said I assumed that it was a case of mistaken identity. I was just going out for a walk on the beach in the rain. I liked rain, I said. They found my business card with Shaffer, Peralta, and Seovic's firm's name and asked me who they were. I told them I was considering hiring them to assist me with crafting some commercial contracts for a potential business deal. I went into full improv mode, giving them the details of my fake company in China, and the harmless things we sold. I stressed that we did not sell lead-filled children's toys. They asked how the gentlemen had died, and I said it had to have been a freak accident with a lightning strike. They had beaten me up and I had gotten away from them, trying to hide on the roof of a house when the lightning hit, I had said. I mentioned that I had overheard my attackers talking about a car they had stolen and gotten stuck on the beach. I said I was pretty sure that they were all high on something. The police shook their heads in disbelief, but they had no real proof that I had done anything wrong myself. I couldn't have caused their deaths, after all. It wouldn't be logical.

The police told me not to leave the hospital until they returned, and I agreed, worried that they might actually try to deport me. But the hospital solved my problem when they realized that I wasn't insured and declared me fit for discharge. It was the fastest I had seen them move in the twenty-four hours that I was there. They didn't offer me a wheelchair to take me outside.

The second day I spent in the warehouse brewing myself a proper healing potion. Not one of the generic ones that I had been so carelessly downing in the last few days, but one that was customized for my body and its specific injuries. One that I wouldn't regurgitate, I hoped. I also made one for Echemendía to help him grow his skin and hair back.

The third morning, Fernando moved Echemendía to a motor yacht that turned out to belong to a mutual friend of theirs, a gentleman of the city who did small-time business with Fernando and expensive lunches with Echemendía. His yacht turned out to be a Falcon 102 and came with its own full-time captain and crew. I had to hand it to Echemendía—he had a way of hiding out in style.

On the stern of the boat was painted in large letters: MY OTHER YACHT IS A LEAR.

The captain kept the yacht slowly motoring around the border between the Biscayne Bay and the open Atlantic, far enough away from land to be nowhere near any other stray craft, but close enough to land to still receive phone service. Close enough to send a tender to pick me up when I was done making my potions.

The boat oozed posh. Everything I wouldn't dream of furnishing a boat could be found on this one. Fragile and expensive crystal and mirrors were everywhere. The plush carpet and the microfiber couches looked like they were one splash of sea spray away from ruination. It was as if the entire boat thumbed its blue-blooded nose at the unforgiving sea that it lived in.

A crewman took me downstairs to a guest cabin that was furnished in teak. There were two bunks in the room, but neither of them had been used recently. I had the room to myself for the moment.

I drank the potion and slept through the day.

When I awoke, my mouth felt like crusted gauze and my left hand hurt like hell. But that was an improvement. Before that, it had been frighteningly numb. I changed the bandages on it, looking it over as objectively as I could. It would probably never look the same again. My fingers would never be perfectly straight, for one thing. But eventually it would be functional, I hoped.

I ate a sandwich and slept again.

When I awoke that night, I could sense in the darkness someone sitting at the edge of the bed at my side, looking down at me.

"Emma," I whispered into the darkness.

"I'm here," she said.

"I'm so sorry," My eyes stung, and her shadow blurred even more in the murk. "I ruined everything for you."

"I know," she said, her voice flat.

"They're dead," I whispered. "The ones who—who—"

"They told me."

"Emma—"

"What they did to me, George—it wasn't rape, but in some ways, it was worse. It was like having your legs bitten off by a shark while you bleed to death in the water. It was—they took away my insides, they stole a part of me that no mortal man could ever steal, no matter how hard he beat me. And the worst part of it was, they made me _like_ it. They made me beg for more, like a crack addict.

"George, what if I never get over the addiction? What if I wake up one morning, and the cravings are too much to resist? What if I end up seeking out more of their kind, in spite of my best judgment? Do you understand? Do you see what they did to me?"

"Emma—I'm so sorry."

"They brutalized me, George. It's not something I'm going to just forget, or forgive. I don't even know when the nightmares are going to stop. I wouldn't have slept at all, if Ava hadn't done something to help me."

It was all my fault, everything that had happened to her. The fact that I had tried to save her later didn't change that. I hadn't seen it coming, and I should have. If I had been acting responsibly, I might not have needed to in the first place. And now someone I cared for had paid the price for my carelessness.

Never again.

"The funny thing," she brushed her thick hair back from her face, "is how blasé Calvin was about it. He actually thought having our life sucked out of us by lust-vampires was a pretty cool experience. Once Ava told him that his life force would slowly regenerate, he stopped worrying about it. His biggest disappointment was that he wouldn't develop any vampire super-powers from the deal."

I smiled in the dark, in spite of myself. That was so Calvin.

"Honestly, his lack of reaction may have been the biggest thing to help me in the long run. He isn't addicted, George. He's too laid back to be addicted. I think that has to be the secret."

"Emma, I think you just told me that Calvin is your new role model."

"I think he is," she stifled a snigger. "I lost my job, George. I was out too many days without permission."

"Couldn't you just call in sick?" I asked, incredulous.

"This is the real world, remember? In my world, you show up to work and you smile about it, or you don't get a paycheck."

I didn't know what to say. I had thought I was a part of that world. But maybe I never had been. Maybe I had been lying to myself.

"Anyway, that's the least of my worries, I guess. The truth is, my job kind of stank. I had the most irritating boss. He always wanted me to work late, and he kept _looking_ at me. You know, maybe I could talk to those ladies we met in Pueblos. They were really nice."

"The ones you conned?"

"I didn't con them, exactly. It was Echemendía who told them I worked for him. All I really did was talk with them for a while."

"Maybe I can ask him to give you a reference," I said.

"Yes, that's the least you can do," she said in a monotone.

I winced. It _was_ the least I could do. The _very_ least. The thing was, I would never be able to make things better for her.

"Rampallian," I reached up and brushed her hair away from her face.

"Fastilarian," she answered, following up with a short sigh.

"I wanted to be the one to visit you first, you know," I said to her. "But I had too many injuries. I had to sleep them off."

"I know. I had a long talk with Fernando and Echemendía about what happened. It's part of the reason I'm not as furious with you as I should have been. In your own inept way, maybe you did try to make up for everything. You tried to make sure that those vampires could never do to anyone else what they did to me. I think that was more important to me than anything else you could have done.

"The thing is, George, as bad as things were, if they had never happened to me, then those monsters would still be out there. Still torturing. Still killing.

"That kind of barbarism is not acceptable in my world, George. It had to end."

"It happens every day, Emma. Behind the curtain, where no one sees."

Emma sat for a minute, thinking. "And whose job is it to put a stop to this kind of thing?"

"Um, well, no one's. In the old days, fey and the like who got out of hand were taken care of with torches and pitchforks. That's why secrecy is so important in the wizarding world. For all our power, the elephant fears the ants when they get riled."

"Wasn't your father some kind of policeman? For your world?"

"How did you—?"

"George, don't be a bonehead. I think you may have talked more than you remember, back in the old days."

"Well, yes, he was a kind of policeman, but he was mostly policing other wizards, making sure they followed the rules. Wardens aren't meant to be an army, and they aren't necessarily there to protect the general population from magical creatures."

"That's not acceptable, George. People are being mistreated. It won't do."

I sighed. "Emma, if it's any consolation, my father's organization is currently at war with one of the factions of vampires."

"The one that ate me and Calvin?"

"No," I admitted. "The truth is, the White Court is considered to be relatively harmless, compared to the others."

"Relatively harmless—" she hissed.

"—compared to the others," I finished. "Emma, there have been mortal vigilantes before. I don't know of any of them ending up on top."

"That's just more rule of the jungle, George. I'm more interested in the rule of law. It applies to everyone, or it doesn't work."

"There just isn't anything like that, Emma. Not even in the world of mortals. There just isn't. There's always the advantaged, and the disadvantaged. And there always will be, no matter how the rules work, as long as there are predators and prey."

Emma sat back, silent. "In that case, I'm going to have a talk with Echemendía."

"About what?"

"George, I think I'm about to get involved in politics."

It might have been me, but I believed I just felt the cosmos tremble.

* * *

><p>When I awoke the next morning, I found my backpack had been moved from the floor to the top of the bureau, sitting next to an orange duffel bag that had I picked up for free from the Coast Guard Auxiliary. I had kept it on my boat. Someone must have gone there and collected some things for me.<p>

I pushed off the covers and rolled painfully out of bed, looking at my arms and hands. I was still pretty pink, but I at least looked a little more life-like. I could slightly move the fingers of my left hand, but it hurt like hell to try. Still, it was a recovery of sorts.

Calvin was sound asleep in the other bunk, breathing softly. I wondered how it was that we were so close in age, and yet I felt like an old man, while he looked—well, like a kid his age should look. The world just wasn't fair.

As I stumbled closer to my bags, I noticed the note pressed against my orange duffel: "_George—I rescued the things you left behind at the beach house, and took the liberty of finding some so-called fresh clothes for you. On that note, you are in dire need of assistance with your wardrobe. Your clothes are older than I am. —Ava. P.S. I met a friend of yours on your boat._"

I tried and failed to suppress the small jolt of testosterone that hit me when I touched the scrap of paper. _Holy Scones_, I thought. _She can even zap me by proxy_. I could have sworn that I could pick up the slight scent of musk wafting up from the paper.

_A friend of mine_, she had said.

I turned around and looked up at the shelf beneath the cabin's porthole as I finally registered the tiny sound of metal tinking. Jeeves was there, dressed in a ratty bathrobe and dirty, striped, knee-length cotton shorts. Across his body lay what looked like a long black leather glove that he was sewing together. It was a brace for my left hand, made from a bicycle glove extended with bits of leather he had purloined from somewhere. Jeeves stopped his sewing and looked at me.

"Jeeves," I finally managed to say. "I'm sorry about what happened."

He crossed his arms for a while, just looking at me. Then he picked up his needle and kept sewing, ignoring me.

"Look," I said defensively, walking right up to him, "I can't always control the things that happen to me."

He reached out with his needle and stabbed me in the arm with it.

"Ow, crap!" I yelped, jerking backwards.

Jeeves stood up, picked up the black glove, and held it up in the air at me. I guessed it was a peace offering, of a kind.

"Thanks, Jeeves," I said, my voice rasping a little. "I won't let you down again, little guy."

I slid the glove over my left hand. It fit perfectly, as we both knew it would.

* * *

><p>Echemendía's campaign manager, Cameron Padrón, arrived at lunchtime, and the two of them talked in private for an hour in the owner's cabin. There were some raised voices that came through the closed door, and when Cameron came out, he looked ashen.<p>

Not long after that, Echemendía's family piled through the doorway. Their reunion was loud and emotional, and the rest of us tactfully sat out on the sun deck. When we climbed back inside the cabin, Echemendía's wife was trying to convince him to come home with her.

But I knew that he couldn't. Not yet. We still had Nawang to fear until the day that we did something about him. I couldn't get out of my head the memory of Nawang standing on top of a car in the middle of the firm's parking lot, sending other cars flying around like toys. In the end, Echemendía's wife relented and went home with his two children to wait for him a little longer. I didn't envy his family, not at all.

Now, in the hottest part of the afternoon, a circle of us gathered in the salon, a tray of Cuban coffee and pastelitos de queso laid out on the table between us. Fernando and Echemendía were there, along with me, Emma, Calvin, Ava, and Cameron.

We were a quiet and solemn bunch at first. We were all thinking about Nawang. But we didn't need to spend the afternoon formulating a plan. We all knew that Echemendía had already decided what he wanted to do. He just had to man up and do it. Cameron waited quietly on the couch, his head lowered, looking fatalistic.

"I'm going to go public," Echemendía finally announced.

Cameron didn't move. He just sighed a little. I couldn't help but wonder what was going through his mind. All of the long hours of work he had put in for a man he must have believed in.

"It will be the end of your campaign. It might be the end of your career," Fernando pointed out.

"The campaign, yes," Echemendía said. "The career, probably not. People will be more shocked that I will admit wrongdoing than that I was actually involved with it. Some other politician will stumble and suddenly people will remember the good things about me. Besides, I'm not going to go into the specifics of how the firm pulled the strings. I'm just going to say it was done. Too much information, and people will think I'm a crackpot."

Cameron shifted restlessly. I wasn't sure how much Echemendía had really told him about the firm. I suspected that he didn't know the whole story. "Okay," he said. "I'll set up a press conference for tomorrow morning for your concession speech. I'll get the team to write up something for you. Monday mornings are usually slow, you should get a decent turn-out."

"Once we make the announcement, Nawang is going to be very motivated to find you before you go public," I pointed out.

"Yes," Echemendía said. "I'm just going to have to take that chance."

"I may be able to get you some physical protection," I mused.

"Our campaign has access to body guards," Cameron said.

"I was thinking of something heavier-duty. I'd like to call in some of John Marcone's muscle."

"John Marcone? But he works for Steven Hernandez!"

I shrugged. "Yeah, but it's very much in his interest to have you get to that press conference. Not only will you be putting yourself out of play, but you'll be dragging down one of his publicity firm's direct competitors. He'll be very motivated to protect you, I would think," I answered.

"Mm," Echemendía rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Okay, call them in. But I'm not paying more for them than I would pay a regular service. And Cameron, I also want a couple of regular bodyguards from our team. When this is over, I want you to make sure everyone on the campaign gets paid, all right?"

I examined my leather-bound hand, remembering the sacrifices I had to make to take on Nawang's vampires. "Is it enough?" I found myself asking. "Will a press conference really deal with Nawang? Will it stop him from going after you?"

"It has to be," Echemendía answered. "I'm a politician, not a mobster. Going public is the only arrow in my quiver. Besides, I have to believe that once I make the press conference, I will pose no additional danger to Nawang. I won't accuse him of anything illegal, just of being underhanded. So the police won't be involved. All I want to do is discredit his firm, convince people not to give him any more contributions, and hopefully squeeze him out of business for a few years."

"I hope you're right," I got up to make the phone call.

Calvin and Emma had been strangely quiet during the conversation. I could feel Emma's wheels turning, while Calvin—well, you could never be sure with Calvin.

And Ava—Ava was working on her fingernails with a file she had procured from the VIP cabin. I couldn't tell if she was shortening them or sharpening them. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw me looking at her, and a knowing smile crept up on her face. Sharpening, I decided. Definitely sharpening.

"Why?" I asked as I brushed by her.

"It's the instinct," she said absently.

I wasn't about to question that.

* * *

><p>At sunset, Angel Lopez and a crew of five mercenaries arrived in a pair of runabouts.<p>

"I thought you were in Chicago," I said to him on the doorstep of the salon.

He shook his head. "Marcone went to Chicago. We stayed for a few extra days to tie up some loose threads for him, but we were scheduled to fly back tomorrow. Know anything about the big fire at the Yargro building?"

"Not a clue," I picked at my teeth with a fingernail.

"Are those burns you're recovering from, or did you strip your skin to look more youthful?" he asked, a subtle twinkle showing in his eyes.

"Shut up," I growled, standing aside so that he and his crew could get into the house, carrying black duffel bags that looked like they weighed a hundred pounds each, and which clanked and jangled loudly.

As I closed the sliding door, Angel introduced himself to Echemendía's two personal bodyguards, who had arrived a half-hour earlier. They evidently knew each other, but were not especially cordial. Angel was horning in on their turf.

He pulled up a chair and shook hands with Echemendía, who looked like he was having second thoughts about having Angel's team over. Truthfully, I was having second thoughts, too. I had invited in the enemy to protect Echemendía. On the face of it, it didn't seem like the brightest thing for me to do. But Marcone hired the best, and Echemendía wasn't going to be his enemy much longer. We all knew it. At least, I hoped we all did.

One big, happy family. Beauty.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter Seventeen**

Nothing in the world beats gazing at the red majesty of a sunrise, staring out from the slowly rocking bow of a boat that's anchored in a place of safety. Okay, okay, sleeping in until noon beats that, but nothing else.

When the sun rises, the universe reminds me that no matter what happens in the mortal world beneath the assembly of clouds, there will always be things that never change. There will always be a tomorrow, for somebody. Maybe not for me. But at least for someone.

There's a lot in this world that I can't count on. Not myself, not my parents, not friends, and definitely not my enemies.

But the sun will be out there in the early hours, and someone, somewhere, will notice. I can hold onto that, if nothing else.

I'm not afraid to die. I'm just afraid to die for a stupid reason.

Except, they're _all_ stupid reasons. Every single one.

* * *

><p>"It's time," Angel said.<p>

I didn't answer. There wasn't anything to say.

I rubbed my hands down my shirt to smooth out its wrinkles, and followed him to the runabout that was tied to the starboard side of the boat. I dropped in behind him, my backpack bouncing heavily, and untied the lines while he started up the engine. Ava was quietly sitting at the bow, a distant look on her face. Her hands twitched in unison with her unspoken thoughts.

A few moments later, the yacht shrank in the distance as I faced it, the warm morning wind whipping past the back of my bald head.

It was just the three of us on the runabout. Angel and I had planned to go early to the conference room, which Cameron had rented at the Lustrenoire, an old waterfront hotel on Miami Beach. If everything checked out, Angel would call in and give the go-head for Echemendía and the rest of the mercenaries to follow in the second runabout.

Calvin and Emma had said that they were just going to camp out on the boat for a while, enjoying the sound of the waves and the free beer. It was about time that they had a break. I wished the best for them.

As for Fernando, he had gone back to the shore in the middle of the night. He said he was behind on his obligations. I wasn't going to ask. I didn't want to know. The thing was, I owed him a lot of favors now. The chances were good that I would eventually find out all too well what Fernando really did for a living when he wasn't pulling my ass out of the fire.

And Echemendía—he didn't come up for breakfast. But we all left him alone. He had enough on his mind without a crowd of well-meaning people breathing down his neck.

* * *

><p>Stepping into the Lustrenoire was like reading an original copy of the Magna Carta—a thing of beautiful ideas, slowly transmuted into yellowed pages and crumbled text. To see the inceptive beauty of the place, you have to close your eyes and imagine.<p>

The Lustrenoire was a massive oceanfront hotel that had been built in the early nineteen-fifties, designed to lure the newly rich Americans to the growing South Beach area. Most of South Beach at the time consisted of mangroves, gritty sand, and palm trees. In the middle of that wilderness paradise hunched the opulent hotel, a siren for people looking for an escape from the grinding stone of propriety. It had been filled with things that glittered and reflected the Miami sun. It stood as a temple to the gods of art deco in its form, yet at the same time mocked those gods with its liberal coating of gilt and its oppressive collection of baroque objet d'arts.

But that was then. That was when gilt and glitter said something meaningful in the language of the day. The glitter is still there. But it doesn't mean anything, any more. It's just glitter. The magic evaporated as the years passed. It's still a popular hotel, but only because it's famous, and big, and people remember it from the movies of yesterday. But it's mostly just popular with the tour busses. The Rat Packs of today don't go there.

Miami's not that old a city, compared to so many others in the world. You would think that everything would be new, here. But things decay rapidly in this place. Maybe it's the salty air. But whatever it is, while the dreams here always start big, they begin to dissolve before they are even realized. It's just how it is.

There's another hotel down the road, the Biltmore, that started life as one of the fanciest hotels in the nation sometime before the Great Depression. But then there was war, and the federal government took it over and turned it into a military hospital. Guided by machine-like regulation, they smeared grey paint over the million-dollar murals that had adorned its interior. And when the war was over, the hotel sat abandoned for years, a place for the neighborhood kids to climb through until the police could ferret them out. A place for ghost stories. That's how it works here. I can't tell you why.

Cameron met us in the front lobby and took us via elevator to the conference room on the fourth floor. It had an ocean view, and for its size was probably pretty expensive. I got the sense that Cameron had decided to become a little freer with his master's money, now that the campaign was ending early.

There were already a lot of people in the room, seated in cliques and talking quietly with each other. They were mostly people who worked directly on Echemendía's campaign staff. But there were also a few people from the Firm, who kept to themselves in the back corner of the room. Word about the campaign ending must have gotten around quickly. I didn't try to talk with them, and they never looked straight at me. They were just the regular employees of the Firm—the insiders were now either dead or on the run from Nawang, and the home office had been half-destroyed by fire. One of them was the juice-girl who had greeted us the very first time we had entered the Yargro Publicity Services building, looking positively miserable. I was glad that she hadn't been injured in the shootout in the parking lot. Nawang had apparently gone to ground, too, leaving his regular employees to twist and turn in the wind. Getting some sense of closure today was probably the best thing that could happen to them. It sure beat spending another day working at that hellhole.

Reporters were trickling in, too. The front two rows of seats had been cordoned off for them. A few cameramen set up their equipment from various vantage points around the room. They were chatty and efficient. I wondered how many times they had been to the beheading of a candidate. More than they could count, I guessed. It was just another day for them. Tomorrow, there would be something else to cover.

Last of all, Echemendía's family arrived. His wife led the children to a line of seats in the front row. Cameras briefly splashed them with blinding white light, but no one asked them any questions.

Angel spent his time looking over the room, checking out the invitees, and talking outside with the hotel security. I didn't sense any signs of distress from him, and I left him to do his thing by himself.

Ava slid next to me and bumped me with her elbow.

"Holding up?" she spoke quietly to me.

I shook my head. "He's not going to just walk away from this. Not from a fight that he can win."

"Do you think he's making a showing here? To kill everyone? And then what? The mob hunts him to ground?"

"He's a chess player, it's true," I said. "But chess is easy when you've got a board full of queens."

"He'll lose them," she said.

"And your king has the freedom to jump anywhere on the board."

"He'll lose his freedom, too."

I looked at her. "Why do you say that?"

She shrugged. "Because that's what you would do. He's no different from any other man."

"Most men don't order other men's deaths. Most men don't lie, cheat, and steal for a living."

She just looked at me.

"Okay," said. "Maybe it's a matter of degree. Can we agree on that?"

Ava gave me a tight smile.

"So how come nobody's hitting on you, anyway?" I asked.

"I never use my powers at funerals or on Sundays," she answered.

"Never?"

"It's a matter of degree," she kicked her foot out and let her shoe dangle on the end of her toe.

"It does feel like a funeral, here, doesn't it?" I looked around at the solemn faces.

She nodded. "I sometimes wonder what mine was like."

"You didn't get to see it?"

"I might have still been dead. Or swimming. It's a little fuzzy. It took me a while to remember who I was. I might have adjusted more easily if I had met another of my kind sooner."

"I'll bet the raw fish thing was a bit of a bummer."

"Oh, no, that was the simple part. Someday I'll introduce you to Highland cooking, and you'll understand."

I grunted. "I wouldn't want to see my funeral. I'd be afraid of finding out that nobody showed," I said.

"They served beer after the funerals in my village. I never wondered why, but I suddenly think you've come up with the answer."

"I'll tell Cameron to get on it." A sudden thought came to me. "Wait a minute," I muttered. "Didn't we meet on a Sunday?"

"Mm-hmm," the hint of a smile crept across her lips.

"So you do use your powers on Sundays, you liar."

She kicked her legs back and forth. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You zapped me with your power-thing. You made me make promises to you. On a Sunday."

Ava shrugged non-committally. "I didn't use any powers. That was all in your head. Maybe you just liked me."

I stared at her. "That's—okay, you're lying. Are you lying to me?"

She just smiled innocently.

"You're evil, aren't you? Underneath all that"—I waved my hand around wildly—"whatever it is you have, you're just a basically evil person. I've figured you out."

"I'm no more evil than a warm donut," she said. "Maybe a box of warm donuts," she corrected herself.

"You're lying about Sunday."

"Maybe, maybe not. What fun would it be for you if you really knew?"

I sighed. She really wasn't going to tell me.

"Ava," I said.

She nodded.

"I'm really sorry about Elliot."

"I know."

"I tried to help him. But I wasn't strong enough. Maybe I wasn't brave enough."

She sighed. "No one expected you to be," she said.

"I did."

"That's because you're too young to know better. Next time you'll know."

"No. Next time, I'll be strong enough."

"Just another man," she said. "Thinking manly thoughts. The world doesn't always bend when you push it, George. Sometimes you bend. And if you don't, you break. I loved Elliot. But I don't begrudge his passing. You freed him. That's enough for both of us. More than I ever thought would happen."

As she spoke, Angel came back in through the conference room door and walked straight up to us. "The hotel is clear," he said.

"Make the call," I answered. "I'm not sure it's enough for me, Ava."

* * *

><p>A half-hour later, Echemendía arrived, alone. No one stood for him. You don't stand up for a loser.<p>

He gazed around the room, taking it in. Absorbing the looks of betrayal and pain emanating from his personal staff. From the looks of curious expectation from the press. He took a breath and walked over to the podium, gripping it tightly with his hands. The morning sun rose behind him in the picture window. The ocean glittered like a necklace of diamonds. But his face was ashen.

"Where's the team?" Angel muttered softly from my side.

I looked at him.

"Excuse me," he said. He discreetly got up from his seat and slid his way to the door in the back of the room.

"My friends and colleagues," Echemendía began. "I have called this conference to announce the end of my campaign. Since the election has not yet taken place, I intend to consult with my party to ensure that another qualified candidate is provided with the opportunity to take my place on the ballot in time for the vote.

"My friends, I am ending my campaign because—because it is destroying my family. Those of you who know me have noticed how the demands of the campaign trail have forced me to spend more and more time on the move, meeting with constituents at all hours of day and night, and less and less time with the family that I love. But I can't go on that way. _We_ can't go on."

I glanced at Echemendía's wife. She was staring up at him, her eyes were swollen and red. But she was also looking at him strangely, as if she didn't quite understand what he was saying.

He hadn't gone public. He was still talking, but by now it was obvious that he wasn't going to denounce Nawang.

I could understand that, after all he had been through. Maybe he just wanted to lie low and try to duck out. But something in the room still felt wrong. It was like something was tickling the bottom of my nose. I looked around. Angel hadn't returned.

"That isn't him," Ava whispered to me.

"What?" I said.

"That's no man," she said, her eyes on Echemendía.

My gaze shifted back toward the podium. It sure looked like him. It sounded like him. But there was still that silent warning that something was out of place.

I took a deep breath, centering myself. I opened my third eye.

The room filled with a riot of color, the mingled auras of all the people in the audience, a complex weave of emotion and memory, the spectrograph of human consciousness.

But behind the podium stood something completely different from the members of the audience. The thing behind the podium looked like a ball of sea water, formed in the shape of a human being. Lines of fire laced through it like veins and arteries, and bits of wood formed its bones. The wood looked like teak.

The thing was a tulpa. It had been beautifully constructed. I marveled at the detail of its composition, even as my gut wrenched in reaction to it, and what it meant. On the other end of it was Nawang, pulling its strings like a virtuoso.

Before I could think about what I was doing, I had grabbed Ava by the hand and pulled her from her seat, guiding her up the aisle to the exit. I could feel its gaze upon my back, noticing us leave in haste.

I couldn't fight a thing like that.

It hadn't threatened anyone, yet. If I took it on, everyone would think that I was attacking the real Echemendía. There was nothing that I could do about it, and maybe nothing I needed to do. Not here.

Ava followed me out the door, even as Echemendía's tulpa kept droning on about love of family. He sounded so damned sincere. My heart bled for his wife, but I couldn't think of any excuse to get her out of the room and away from it. I could only hope that it would leave her alone.

Angel was pacing back and forth in the hallway, staring at the screen on his cell phone.

"I can't contact the team," he said to us.

"That's not Echemendía," I said. "It's an impostor."

Angel pulled his submachine gun from his jacket and moved toward the meeting room door.

"Wait! Wait! Wait!" I called out, stepping in front of him and grabbing his lapel.

"Let go," he said coldly.

"You can't fight it," I said. "Bullets won't hurt it."

He looked at me. "I need a sword, then," he said. "Be right back."

"It's not a demon," I gripped him harder. "It's not alive at all. You can't hurt it except maybe by blowing it up."

"Blowing it up," his eyes moved over to his black duffel bag sitting on the carpet by the door.

"Angel," I said. "It's just a puppet. If you want to find out what happened to your team, you've got to find out who's on the other end of its strings."

"Puppet," he repeated.

"It's—I'm not sure if you know what a tulpa is."

He shook his head.

"Look," I frowned in thought. "The tulpa's bones were made out of teak. I think—I think Echemendía may still be on the boat. Maybe with your team."

I closed my eyes. _And that meant Emma and Calvin were still on the boat, too._ "We need to get back to the yacht," I said. "There's innocent bystanders there."

He looked at me with eyes of liquid nitrogen.

"Please," I added. "There's lives at stake."

"I have to call this in. Excuse me," Angel pulled his cell phone out and walked away from me and Ava.

"This is going to end poorly," Ava said.

I could only nod as we waited for Angel. He talked on the cell phone for about a minute. When the call was done, he closed the phone slowly and seemed to compose himself. He strode over to his duffel bag, unzipped it, and dropped his submachine gun into it.

"Angel?" I said.

He zipped the bag shut.

"Angel?" I said again.

He looked back at me, and his eyes were steely. "I've been recalled to Chicago. Immediately," he announced.

"What?" I said stupidly.

"The Boss is calling in a different team to take out the Lama."

"Because he thinks the rest of your team is dead?"

"Even if they are alive, they aren't equipped to take on someone like Nawang."

"But if he's on a boat, he'll have only a fraction of his available power. The playing field would be more level. If you wait for another team, he may get to dry land by then."

"Playing field? Level? You think this is some kind of video game? What do you call that _thing_ in that room? Where are my _men_, kid?"

He had me at that. "Okay, when will the new team be here?" I asked instead.

"Depends on the team and the equipment. If they need experts, it takes longer to round them up and brief them. Best guess is tomorrow morning. If they decide to survey him first, it could take a lot longer."

_Emma could be dead by then,_ I thought.

"And what about Echemendía?" I asked.

Angel shrugged and picked up the bag. "That's not the Boss' problem. Echemendía is out of the race. The Boss has won. Case closed. The only loose thread is the Lama. The Boss views him as a personal threat. I'm sorry, kid, for you and for my team. If you ever come to Chicago, look us up."

With that, he turned his back on us and simply walked away.

_Marcone is a killer_, Fernando had told me. _I should have seen it coming_.

Angel paused for a moment, turned his head back over his shoulder. "You need anything from my bag?" he asked.

I thought of how lame I was when I tried to fire an AK-47 out of a car window. I shook my head.

"Don't do anything stupid," he said as he resumed his walk to the elevator. "Let the professionals sort it out."

"What? Me? Stupid?" I called back. "That's like asking me not to—to—when I think of something witty, I'll call you first."

"Figured," he said. The elevator door closed behind him.

* * *

><p>Behind me, the murmuring sound of voices began to rise. The press conference was breaking up.<p>

"George," Ava touched me on the shoulder. "I'll meet you downstairs."

"What?"

"I don't think I care to talk to it. Why don't you come with me?"

I looked back at the door. The truth was, my base instincts told me to flee. My heart started to beat heavily. The tulpa was coming. But somehow, some other part of me told me to hold my ground. To stand up and face it. I didn't agree very much with that part of me. I didn't think that part of me was very bright. But I stood my ground, anyway. Maybe I just couldn't resist the morbid curiosity to find out what Nawang's tulpa would do to me if it got near enough.

The door opened, and Echemendía's tulpa strode out alone. Ava was already halfway to the elevator. Its eyes locked on me. For a moment, it hesitated. I took the initiative and started walking towards it.

"Aren't you forgetting your wife and children?" I said acidly.

"Never," it replied.

"And tonight? Are you going to share her bed?"

Its eyes narrowed. "Is that what you would do in my place?" it asked. "I have no interest in bystanders."

"You have their husband," I countered. "I would say that they are now fully involved."

"This is not the place to discuss it," he turned his head. Reporters and their crews were filing out through the door. "Let's take the stairs. The elevators can be so crowded, don't you agree?" The tulpa wrapped its fingers around my arm and pulled me along. The grip felt like machinery. It reminded me too much of Isaac when he pulled me to Bouknight's office. It pushed open the door to the stairwell and pulled me in with it. The door clanged shut behind me.

"Why?" I said to the back of its ear.

"Why the tulpa? I would have thought that would be obvious."

"No, why the Firm? Why go through all this trouble, anyway?"

The tulpa came to a sudden stop at the head of the stairs, lost in thought. "What is magic, lobsang? It is the harnessing of arcane energy. And what is money? It's just another form of energy. How much kinetic energy could a man release with a hundred dollars? What about a million? A billion?

"You and the White Council that you've been courting, you've put magic into a neat little box. And in so doing, you've put yourselves right into the box with it. You've missed the obvious—that the greatest source of magic known to man resides in his back pocket. The vampire courts understood this lesson centuries ago. It's why they expend so much effort on their business ventures. We disdained them from our spiral, didn't we? But then our spiral was broken, and we had to face the world's painful truths. And the truth was, all along we were the ones who were misguided, and they and their kind were the ones who were right."

I held my arms out straight, waving my hands around woodenly, zombie-like. "Sustainable growth," I droned, "increases with higher levels of financial leverage as long as the benefit from increased debt utilization exceeds the marginal cost of borrowing," I drew a deep, ragged breath. "Brains…"

"Clearly you are determined to be a Philistine," the tulpa narrowed its eyes to sharpened slits.

"It's fake magic," I said. "Everyone knows it's fake."

"So is all magic. So is everything around you. You can't measure things by what they are. Only by what effect they have. And you must admit, cash flow has a very powerful effect."

I shook my head. "So at the end of the day, what _effect_ are you looking for, anyhow?"

"Simply put, I am going to pay the ransom for our occupied country. One way or another, I will use the money made through the Firm to wrest Tibet from the hands of the People's Army."

"After all these years?" I narrowed my eyes in disbelief.

"Yes. Join my cause, lobsang. Help me to return Tibet to self-determination. It can be done."

"And the Dali Lama? You wish him to return to rule?"

The tulpa pursed its lips.

"No," I observed. "You think him unworthy."

"We needed him. We counted on him to speak for us. To protect and guide us. But he ran away. I would be a fool indeed to trust his office again."

"And you intend to continue collaborating with our old enemies?"

"I never said that I trusted them. But we are allied by circumstance. They, too, hold grudges against the People."

I sighed. "Your goal is marginally righteous, Lama. But your methods are not."

"No, you are right. But the righteous methods won't suffice. A non-violent protest? You have seen for yourself in the news how well that plan worked out. Diplomatic maneuvering? The People laugh at such feeble efforts. But money—enough money—levels all the mountains, and signs all agreements. The ultimate problem has become a question of will. And my methods must reflect the realities of the world."

"In short, you're telling me to shut up and grow up."

"I don't hold your idealism against you, lobsang. You are young, and the young still think that they are entitled to all the _khyi skyag_ that we promised to you as parents. We told you that there were gods who would protect you, and you believed that. And we told you that there was justice, and you believed that, too. It takes many years to learn the truth."

"And that's what you propose to teach me? The truth?"

"Yes. The real truth, this time. All of it. You will open your eyes, and see the world as it truly is. That will be my gift to you. If you are brave enough to face it."

"And Emma and Calvin? What becomes of them?"

"They are my insurance for your good attitude. They are an unfortunate necessity, given your past behavior."

"What if I promise to obey? Would you let them go?"

"If you genuinely made such a promise, you would be an unworthy student."

"Buddah's nads, I don't understand you at all."

The tulpa almost smiled. "But you are close. Enlightenment is so near to you, I can feel it wrapped around you. If it were not so, I would not have taken so many pains to offer you so much opportunity."

"I might decide that the world works differently then you believe."

"If you help me to achieve my goals, by the time you are graduated, the world could be sufficiently different that you would be right. It's what I live for, after all."

I looked down the stairwell.

The tulpa let go of my arm, and rested the palm of its hand on the back of my shoulder blade. If I didn't acquiesce, all it would take would be a simple push to spill me head over heels down the concrete steps. And if that didn't work, then another push. And another.

"Decide," the tulpa said. "Your first lesson is to grow up and learn to live with your decisions."

"You're right," I said. "I've decided."

The tulpa's hand pressed harder against my back.

I closed my eyes and drew out tendrils of power from the concrete around us.

"So be it!" the tulpa cried out, pushing me forward, flinging me up into the air, the stairs dropping rapidly away from me.

The weave that bound this world to the next was a bit thin here. Not as thin as I would have wanted, but maybe enough. As my body rolled through the air, I mentally picked a spot where my body would fly, and punched as hard as I could into the fabric wall that separated my world from Nevernever.

A hole opened. A pretty small one.

My body tumbled right into it, back first. Uh, truth be told, butt-first. My rump stuck right into the hole. I had fallen into it up to my knees and my chest. My calves stuck out into the air, one foot bare, and one foot dangling a flip-flop by my big toe. My head and arms bulged out of the hole, hanging upside down. I was suspended ridiculously in thin air.

This was the first time in years that I had tried to open a Way, and the first time _ever_ that I had attempted to travel to Nevernever unsupervised. On those rare occasions that my father took me there, we had only traveled along the well-worn trails. He had warned me sternly against going there by myself, even on the marked trails, until I had become a full-blown wizard. Father had shown me some of the dangers from a safe distance. My skin had crawled at what I had seen. I got the lesson. Never, ever go to Nevernever from a blind entrance. You just don't know what horror lies on the other side. Don't go, even if your life depends on it.

But the thing is, tulpas can't travel to Nevernever without their masters at their sides to guide them. And right now, my life did depend on it. It's funny how quickly priorities can change like that, when you get down to it.

The tulpa raised its right arm, mouthing an incantation.

"_Anil_!" I cried out. Normally, when I summon a wind it would be to push something away from me. This time, I held the wind still and pushed myself away from it. With an ominous slurping sound, my body slipped the rest of the way through the hole. As I dropped away from it into pitch darkness, a huge jet of orange and green flame poured though the gap, perhaps twenty feet in length, hitting me with an intense heat.

For a moment, I thought that I could see a galaxy of faint stars through the dying light of the fire.

Then the back of my head hit something hard, and I blacked out.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen**

It goes without saying that I awoke with a throbbing headache.

I slowly opened my eyes, blinking. For a moment, I thought that I was blind, but then I realized that it was simply very dark around me. I sat still, listening, but heard no sounds of movement apart from the sporadic clattering of loose stones and a deep, unsettled throbbing beneath the ground. Every few moments, the ground seemed to swell upwards and slowly resettle into place, as if the very earth beneath me rested uneasily.

Above me, a trillion stars of every color twinkled silently. I just looked up at them for a while, unmoving, content merely to be alive for the moment. The truth was, I had expected a much harder landing.

But that didn't mean that this place wasn't dangerous. It just meant that I hadn't been discovered by something hungry.

Carefully, I began to move each of my limbs in turn, checking myself for injuries. I didn't bother with my left hand. It was still tightly bound up in Jeeves' homemade glove, and wouldn't be fully mobile for days.

Everything seemed to be in decent working order, if you didn't count my head.

I sat up, wondering how long I had been out. I pulled a cell phone out of my pocket to check the time, but when I flipped it open, the screen was black. I was going to toss it away as a loss, but thought better of it and pushed it back into my pocket. Maybe it would work again when I got back.

I looked around me. My backpack had fallen to the ground a few yards away. I crawled over to it and opened it up.

"Jeeves?" I whispered into the opening.

The little dude crawled out partway, gazing up at me.

"Any broken bones?" I whispered again.

He shook his head and gave me a little salute, stuffing himself back into his resting place in the bag. I closed it and pushed myself upright, gazing around at my surroundings.

Under the dim light of the stars, everything around me looked like it was one of two colors—black, and blacker. I considered using magic to create a light to see by, but just as quickly decided against doing that. The same light that would help me to see would also announce my presence, and I wasn't so keen on that.

It looked to me like I had come out on the side of some kind of mountain, part of a long range, as far as I could tell. The mountain overlooked a valley that was so deep, it looked like a crater. In fact, the more that I stared at it, the more that it really did look like a crater.

Something huge had once fallen here.

As if on queue, the ground throbbed beneath my bare feet, and more stones shifted around me. I bent down and picked one up. The rock felt like smooth glass in my fingers. I dropped it down to the ground.

There was no point in sticking around. It wouldn't be wise to try to return home at this spot. The tulpa would probably be still waiting for me. So I had to travel far enough away that I could go home without it noticing me. The good new was, that probably wouldn't be very far—maybe half a mile at most.

The mountain I was on seemed lifeless. There were no outlines of trees that I could see. No animals that I could hear. Nothing slithered. Nothing buzzed. It was like standing on the dark side of the moon. The only sound was of the random shifting of pebbles, and the low, ambient throbbing that bubbled up from the dry earth.

One thing was for sure. This place looked nothing like the places my father took me to. The lands of Nevernever we walked through were verdant and lush, filled with the calls of life. And the odd thing was that back in Miami, the doorways we had used were located not very far from the Lustrenoire hotel. That's the problem with Nevernever. It's warped, or something. If you drew out a grid on it, and a grid on Earth, the coordinates wouldn't match up. One mile on Earth might be a hundred here in places, and vice versa.

Maybe it's the Earth that's warped, instead. It would explain a lot.

I sat down, my elbows on my knees and my head cradled in my hands.

It sucked to be on safari alone. If I slipped and fell, no one would know. But I couldn't stick around, either. It was time to move. I bit my lip, gnawing on my own thoughts. I couldn't see well enough to walk safely through all this shifting rock without a light to see by. I had to think like I was blind. I needed a stick, or a dog—

I glanced over at the backpack.

Jeeves didn't have any eyes. He probably didn't need any light at all, now that I thought about it. I reached over to the pack and opened it, letting him out.

"Can you see well enough to walk safely?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Think you can guide me about a half mile away from here?"

He nodded again, and rummaged through the backpack, pulling out his box of dental floss. I yanked out a few yards of line, tying one end to his waist, and the other end to my left wrist. It was tough trying to tie anything using only one hand, but then again my knots only had to last for an hour or so.

I pulled my backpack onto my right shoulder, standing straight.

"Okay," I said. "I'm ready."

Jeeves just looked up at me expectantly.

"Uh, yeah, uh, how about you lead me horizontally over to that outcropping pillar thing over there? At least it's something that I can see well enough to keep my eyes on."

The dental floss suddenly tightened in my hand, and I let myself be led onward. About every tenth step, I stepped hard on a sharp rock with a bare foot, until I finally asked Jeeves to slow up a little so that I could walk a bit more lightly on my feet, testing the ground a little with each step. It slowed me down, but that really wasn't important to me. Getting there with my ankles intact was much higher on my list.

In about an hour, we were halfway to the spot that I had picked. I began to wonder if that outcropping was really only a half-mile away. Whatever it was, it had gotten much bigger. It looked like a trio of black pillars—huge ones, maybe five stories tall. They were joined at the top by a broken ring, barely visible to the naked eye in the cloudless starlight.

The ground rumbled unsteadily again.

Jeeves pulled on the string impatiently.

"Okay, okay," I said crankily. "Give you a little extra leash and see what happens."

He pulled on the line again.

We started walking. We picked our way through the remains of rock slides, along narrow ledges, over boulders, and across fissures and narrow black chasms. All the time that we trekked, the only sounds were the ones that we made ourselves, and of the dreaming world beneath me.

At the end of our journey, the pillars loomed above me, like fingers of a hand that dared to brush the sky.

There was no obvious trail down to them. No steps, no ramp. But it couldn't have been a natural feature of the mountain. It was just too—manmade. Or whatever served as manmade in a place like Nevernever.

As we slid past a long wall, I put my hand out to steady myself, and felt irregular indentations in the rock. I moved my face closer, running my hand back and forth.

Words. Or maybe pictographs. I couldn't read them in the gloom.

"Did you come here to reminisce, boy? About the good old days?" an oddly accented old woman's voice called out from directly behind me. I jumped out of my skin, whipping around.

"Um, hi," I managed to say.

"There's something wrong with your monkey," the voice in the gloom said. "I haven't seen it blink once."

"He's not a monkey," I answered a bit sourly.

I could hear the slow shuffling of feet ahead of me, and in spite of myself, I found myself backing up against the wall. At arm's length from me, the old woman stopped. She stood about three and a half feet tall, and her wispy white hear glimmered like a spider's web in the starlight. She seemed to be sniffing at something.

"What do you want, old woman?" I asked.

She snorted and coughed at the same time, one affectation tripping over the other. "Do you know what this place was?" she asked. "Once, the valley below was a green land. Once, but long ago. The gods fought here. An enormous battle. It would have lasted many of your mortal lifetimes. The gods were fiercer then, young and reckless. They say that the three fought to their last ounce here. They say that at the end, they died in each other's embrace."

"Is that what this place is?" I said. "A memorial?"

"Perhaps it's the opposite. Sometimes we make memorials to help us forget."

"I wonder who built it," I said absently, giving the gloomy pillars a second look.

"Who knows?" she said. "It was very long ago. But I have heard it said that the Seelie courts once served those gods—and not voluntarily. That their deaths finally freed the fey. Three warring gods—three courts."

I looked at her. "Two courts you mean. Summer and Winter."

The crone stared at me in silence.

"Who would oppose both Summer and Winter?"

"It was before my time," she murmured. "Whoever they may have been, they followed the three gods to wherever they went. An unhappy ending. But one wonders whether the Seelie courts arranged that war to gain their liberty."

"And they built this place?" I asked again.

She merely shrugged.

"There's a wife's tale," she said, "that such is the damage done to this valley, that time itself flows backwards here. Sometimes fools come here to try to regain their lost youth."

"But not you?" I dared to ask.

She cackled fiercely. "Do you like the results?" she asked. She took a half-step closer to me. "Do you wish to know the way?" she asked. "I know many paths. What would you give me if I told you of them?"

"No deals. Not with the likes of you. No offense intended."

The old woman cackled again.

"Your loss," she said. "I suppose I'll be helping myself to your bag, soon. I have many like them. And your monkey will be mine, too."

"He's not a—you can't see any better than I can, can you? How do you keep from breaking your neck?"

"I don't," she answered coyly. "But it always grows back."

She turned her head to the left and suddenly stiffened. "Earlier than I thought. I must hurry."

"Hurry? Hurry where?"

"Away!" she said impatiently, shuffling away from me.

"What's coming?"

"A lesson," her voice came back to me from the darkness.

I didn't like the sound of that.

Kneeling down, I tugged on the string and reeled Jeeves back to me. When I found him, I chewed off the dental floss from my wrist and shoved him back into my backpack.

As I was kneeling, shadows flitted across the stars above me. Man-sized shadows. Loads of them. They were coming down from the top of the mountain, leaping down past me. I could hear them lightly landing on the stony ground, running deftly on bare feet.

And then a trio landed almost right in front of me. One of them turned its head back at me and suddenly hissed. "Scout!" it cried out in a soft dialect of Spanish. The other two suddenly checked themselves and looked back in my direction.

I could smell something now. It's hard to describe, but the three of them smelled—well, moldy. Like old, wet socks. And the one nearest to me, his breath was just grizzly.

My body simply seemed to freeze when he held his gaze on me.

That's when I understood. Red Court. Red Court _vampires_. Not three of them. More like three hundred. The sworn enemies of the White Council.

They weren't my enemies, in my mind. I wasn't on the Council. But they didn't know that, did they? All they could see was _wizard boy_.

I steeled myself to cast something, anything.

The one who had spoken first let out a hissing laugh. "To the food," he hissed in Spanish. "To the table." He raised his hands and moved towards me.

"No time for that," a shadowy woman in the middle spoke with a husky voice. She raised her hand and spoke something. Wriggling tendrils blacker than night shot out of her hand towards me, like the arms of a famished octopus. Even in the darkness, I could see them perfectly.

I closed my eyes to escape the sight of them.

But when they touched me, something bizarre happened. In my mind, I found myself back in the tent where Nawang had dominated the journalists. The runes that covered the inside of the tent stood out strongly, as if they were all that were real. Suddenly, some of them started moving horizontally, some to the left, some to the right. It was like watching a combination lock working itself, rotating its tumblers until they hit the right sequence.

I knew that the tendrils meant death. I could feel their hunger, their vacuum as they reached me. But when the tumblers stopped, a kind of imaginary skin formed around me. A shield against the void. It had all happened automatically, before I could even think about it.

I opened my eyes again. This time, I could see the three of them clearly. They were demonic in appearance. They looked very much like the Tibetan weavings of angry gods, all fangs, long tongue, and deep scowls. Their hands were clawed, with crusted nails. Pälden Lhamo's secret children. Or what finally became of them.

"Stop!" the woman in the middle raised her hand to halt the first one. "This one is Marked. He's one of us."

"He's just a traitor then," the first one pulled away from her. "We'll feed and go."

"No," she said more firmly. "Do not defy me in this," she looked at me closely. "He's one of _us_," she said again, with meaning. But what she meant beat the hell out of me.

The first vampire looked as confused as I felt. "What are you talking about?"

"I have spoken my peace," she said.

Then I understood. I was tainted with Nawang's magic. The forbidden magic. The Outsider magic. That's what she had used on me, and I had automatically responded with the right shield against it. Whoever she was, she was more than just a Red Court vampire. She was playing some kind of double game.

And now, so was I.

Uncle Senge was going to totally kill me for using the forbidden magic. Probably literally. You just can't win for losing.

"Are they near?" she asked me, looking carefully at me.

"Yes," I muttered sullenly. I had no idea who they were talking about.

"Then let us find them," she said. "Follow us," she commanded me.

I wasn't in a position to argue with three hundred twitchy vampires. I lifted my bag and tried to keep up.

* * *

><p>What <em>is <em>a group of vampires called, anyway? A murder? A suckle? A fright?

We spilled down the mountain, an avalanche of shadows. Pebbles followed us down, melding into rolling cascades. About halfway down, the vampires suddenly turned to the left, following a wide, smooth ledge that wrapped around the mountain, heading right back in the direction from which I had started.

The vampires were superbly organized, or at least it seemed like it to me. They were grouped into small teams, which communicated short messages to each other via silent hand signals.

Scouts had been sent ahead, fanning out in many directions. Rear guards trailed languidly but watchfully behind us, cutting off the chance of surprise from the rear. It was like walking amidst a colony of stirred-up army ants.

A _swarm_. That's what they were. A freakin' hellish swarm of blood-sucking, weight-lifting, long-jumping, semi-automatic pointing army ants. Buddha's piss.

Hands went up.

The vampire who had proposed to eat me earlier put a firm hand on my shoulder, pushing me down to the ground. All the vampires dropped down and waited in silence.

More hands flashed. Here and there, a team that had received its orders crawled away in one direction or another. The vampires were slowly flanking something.

"Our scouts say there's twenty-five of them. Does that sound right?" mister hungry whispered into my ear.

I shook my head. "There should have been more," I made up an answer for him. "There were multiple objectives. They might have split up to take them all on at once."

"Against _us_? Idiots," he hissed. "They deserve what they get."

He had to have been talking about the White Council. The Red Court wasn't at war with anyone else, as far as I knew. The vampires were setting up an ambush. Three hundred against twenty-five.

"And what do you get by fighting them?" I risked.

He glanced sideways at me. "You've been a thorn in our side for centuries. It's about time we took out the trash."

"You can't eat glory," I said.

"Yet, Man cannot live on blood alone," he grinned ferociously, all long teeth.

I shut up. You can't argue with that kind of logic.

Sir slurp-a-lot crawled ahead of me to a stony hump, beyond which the ground fell away into the deeper recesses of the crater, offering a view of the land and a bit of cover. I crawled my way to his side to see.

About two or three blocks away from us, a line of White Court wizards picked their way across the stone, heading vaguely in our direction. I didn't know what they were doing here. Maybe they were traveling between Way gates. I doubted that there was anything else in this crater that would draw them here, other than it being a relatively safe place to walk in Nevernever.

They were a bedraggled looking crew. Their heads hung low, and their shoulders seemed stooped. They walked in a ragged, undisciplined line, and they didn't bother to send out scouts ahead, as the vampires had done. They looked like they had already had their fight. And maybe they had. Maybe they weren't going anywhere, but home.

I swallowed.

A hand gripped my shoulder, a strong hand. The vampire beside me slid over to my ear and whispered to me. "Traitor," he rolled the word out slowly, enjoying it. "Traitor, remember that we are watching you. Please give me a reason to take you. Oh, please."

"I don't know them," I said thickly. "I am not their keeper." I might have started to quietly cry. I don't remember.

The vampire shifted a bit away from me, but he kept his hand on my forearm. His dirty claws pricked my skin.

The minutes ticked by, as the wizards ambled closer. With the patience of spiders, the vampires remained in their chosen places, as still as the rocks around us. More still, even, because the ground continued to groan and tremble beneath us. Silence seemed to envelop us, falling like a thick cloud. I turned my head a notch to look at the vampire, and he smiled at me wryly, putting a finger to his lips.

The lead wizard suddenly stopped, his head snapping up. He had finally sensed that something was amiss. "Run," I whispered quietly in his direction. "Run, you asshole."

But the other wizards kept walking, and ended up bunching up into a ball behind him. It was probably the worst thing they could have done, tactically. It was as if they simply didn't care.

In the corner of my eye, I saw that a vampire from another team about a hundred yards off had lifted a long, narrow tube onto his shoulder, aimed at the wizards down below.

"Oh, shit," I said. The vampire gripped my arm harder as a warning.

A rocket-propelled grenade zipped out of the tube, a bright flare in the darkness. Make that three bright flares, fired from each side of the wizards. A trail of thin smoke hovered in the air behind them, standing out in the light. It took less than a second for the grenades to reach the wizards. I saw the lead wizard start to raise his staff upwards, when the grenades struck.

There were three bright flashes of light, but only one huge clap of thunder. I cried out in pain. Dots of red light swam across my eyes, dancing.

When I had blinked away my tears, I looked through the rolling smoke.

To my astonishment, most of the wizards were still standing. The lead wizard held his staff high into the air, and a shimmering translucent dome stretched around and over the crew. The other wizards had drawn swords or held up staves, standing ready for the ambush.

"Eff me," I said. "I have got to learn how to do that."

Then I also counted three bodies lying prone on the ground, outside the range of the shield.

Twenty-two wizards.

The killing had begun.

The Red Court laid down a storm of small arms fire at the wizards, more than even that formidable shield could withstand, forcing them to drop flat to the ground. For a moment, I blinked as I thought that the wizards were sinking into rock, but I realized that a bank of earth was slowly forming around the wizards, offering them a small measure of protection against the flight of soft lead. A hodgepodge of shields flew up around the leading edge of the berm, bullets and grenades bouncing off of them harmlessly to the exterior of the defensive circle. The wizards themselves took places at either the edge of the wall, or huddled in the center of the circle, depending on what each had decided to do.

With each successful defense that they put up, I found myself quietly cheering on the White Council wizards. It wasn't that I had any special love for them—and I had a few good reasons to distrust them. It was that I found myself seething at the Red Court vampires, my disgust with them growing with each minute. When I thought of all they had once been, and all that they could have given to mankind but instead had thrown away for the sake of their bottomless appetites, my jaw clenched in growing anger. I could see their deep past now, written on the form of their faces, visages that had been meant to frighten enemies and bring strength to friends, but which had been willfully repurposed to do the opposite.

The vampires didn't fight for any cause. There was no cause that they believed in, apart from their fruitless search for stimuli. As far as I could tell, the vampires were turning out to be regular nihilists.

But if that were true, why were they fighting this war at all? How could they be so organized, so disciplined, so well-trained at the arts of battle? My eyes roved over toward the vampiress who had let me live, the one who had struck me as playing a double-game. It hit me, then, that this whole battle had nothing to do with the Red Court, really. The vampires here were being used. And the White Council—well, the vampiress sure wasn't surprised to see me. Maybe they were in the same boat.

Which meant that the battle before me was a sorry sham. Maybe even the whole war—the deaths—I didn't want to think about it. I could only watch a small part of it play out.

The ambush had only lasted a few seconds so far. In spite of their surprise, the wizards had put up some pretty hardy defenses, all things considered. But even as I quietly cheered for them, and even though I had not yet seen their counter-strike, I found myself feeling uneasy about what I had seen of them so far. They had put up shields, yes, but only sporadically. There seemed to be no plan to their defensive measures. I could see several clear gaps between individual shields. Small gaps—but still there. The fact was, I got the feeling that they were fighting like a roomful of individuals and not a knit team of soldiers.

The White Council wizards walked the Earth like gods, but I could see that that was their flaw as much as their strength. Gods can't be soldiers, because gods can't give up their egos long enough to train like them long before the battle even begins. The more I saw of them, the more I saw a roomful of irate college professors, every one the chair of department number one.

They were together. But they fought alone. It was how each had been brought up.

Brilliant beams of red light flashed out from the edge of the circle. A pair of vampires screeched horribly in the distance, standing up from their positions, their bodies engulfed in a green fire.

The red beams kept coming, and more vampires died. One here, two there.

At the same time, the vampires' small teams kept on the move, their efforts superbly coordinated. I watched as one team would move close to the edge of the circle to attract the attention of the wizards and force them to shift their shields, while another team further off fired bullets into the newly formed gaps. The vampires were using the same tactics as wolves. And the wizards were falling for it, running from one threat to another.

A small flash of light caught the corner of my left eye. My captor's gaze was ahead of mine, staring off in the direction that I had turned to.

A pair of wizards stood alone, as still as statues, uphill from both Council and Court. I couldn't tell if they were merely casually perusing the battle from their vantage point, or had been caught by surprise.

I squinted my eyes.

Not White Council wizards.

Nawang. And tulpa. Looking for me. And instead of being the hunters, they had stepped right into a nest of ornery army ants. I almost would have spit out a laugh, if things weren't already so bad.

With inhuman precision, a group of vampire teams turned from their original objective to face the newcomers.

Yelling, the tulpa of Echemendía ran forward, fire erupting from him like water from a fountain. It had turned itself into a humanoid fireball, and hurled itself right at the nearest team, who scattered to avoid it, firing their guns at it to no effect.

The other teams unleashed their weapons at Nawang, but the bullets just seemed to spin around him, flying right back at the vampires, sometimes even striking a few of them.

Nawang curled his lip in disdain.

Dropping their useless guns, the vampires went old-school. They leapt high in the air at him, claws and teeth bared. At least twenty of them took him on, converging on him from three sides.

An intense white light flashed around him, followed by a chest-beating clap of thunder. The bodies of vampires flew away from him, twirling limply in the air. Fifty feet. A hundred feet.

Nawang stood alone. Unhurt, but looking a little tired.

He took the time to gaze some more around the battlefield, taking its full measure. That's when he first noticed me lying prone among the Red Court vampires. He put his hand to his chin in thought, staring at me without expression.

And then he opened up a Way behind him and stepped into it. When the Way closed, his tulpa suddenly extinguished and collapsed, dissolving into its elements.

Meanwhile, the fight against the circle of wizards had only gotten nastier. Magic-wielding vampires had stepped forward to dislodge the wizards from their fortification. They invoked earth magic to turn the rock within the defensive zone into semi-liquid, and to eat away at the earthen embankment.

The circle was beginning to destabilize. The wizards would have to find some way to suppress the magical attacks, or move. A magic circle wouldn't help them—it would suppress their own magic and wouldn't stop any bullets. And worse, it looked like they were being intentionally divided up into separate groups. The weak were being separated from the strong, forced outside the defensive perimeter by attacks from within it. And people were dying, escaping quicksand only to run into a wall of bullets.

It was awful to watch.

Fifteen wizards. Nine. Six. I curled to my knees and vomited. I just couldn't stop my body. I'd never seen such appalling waste of life. The cruelty of it took my breath away.

"Enjoying the view, traitor?" my captor taunted me from my side. "This is what you wanted, wasn't it?"

"I don't know what I want," I said weakly.

"I do," he answered. "That's the difference between us. That's why we will always be the predators, and your kind will always be the sheep."

I let my eyes flicker over to the vampiress, who was directing three teams to circle further around the surviving wizards, to prevent them from fleeing on foot.

"It's nice to have something positive to believe in," I said.

"Asshole," he growled.

As the number of defenders dwindled, the circle of vampires contracted around them, pinning them in. The chief wizard, who had made the original shield dome, was still with them. Three of them looked like they might have been wardens; they held swords in one hand, and had that look that my father would sometimes get. Two of them looked younger and less sure of themselves.

The chief held his staff out like a shield, pointing it around in different directions, as if it could ward off the vampires. He drew his other arm across the survivors, trying to protect them.

Maybe seventy vampires had died in the battle, not counting the ones Nawang had taken out. The wizards hadn't done so badly, if you went by kill ratios. But war isn't a math problem.

Lowering his head in concentration, the chief raised his staff high above his head, and struck it hard on the ground.

The earth shook violently. I fell flat upon my face. The vampires fell with me. No amount of agility could stand up to the bucking and heaving of the angry ground. I tried to lift my head to see the wizards.

One second they were there. The next, they seemed to fall through a hole in the earth. For a second, I thought that they had been trapped by their own earthquake. But then a realized that they had briefly opened a Way directly beneath them, and fallen through it in a last desperate move to escape the vampires.

When the rocking slowly subsided, I got up on my feet and walked down to the circle where they had last stood. A perfect circle of the ground was soaked with a layer of sea water. Their emergency Way had probably landed them somewhere out on the Atlantic. I could only hope that they had a short swim to shore. I could only hope that the Way hadn't opened up deep under the water's surface. There were so many things that could have gone wrong. They might have died by their own hands.

I sighed.

I hadn't saved them. I couldn't. I wasn't even sure if I had saved myself.

The Red Court vampires were laughing. The ambush had been a victory for them, one of many. Some of them picked up shorn limbs of their victims and danced with them over their heads, singing a mockery of the hymn _There Is Power in the Blood_.

My captor walked over to me, gloating.

"Care to join our victory dance?" he asked. "I'm sure we can find the head of one of your colleges for you to carry."

"That's the Red Court I know," I said. "Always gracious in victory."

"I'm told that we are moving out. We are inviting you to come with us."

"I still have my own mission to complete. Would you be offended if I declined?"

My captor turned his head towards the vampiress. She nodded at me, and then turned away.

"No," he scowled. "Good luck with your—mission."

The battalion had already started to move out to their next position. Those who had danced now unceremoniously dropped the limbs that they had carried into a small pile. It only took about ten minutes for them all to collect their gear and leave, quick-stepping in a long line.

They hadn't drunk the blood of the wizards to get their strength back. I wondered why. Maybe wizards taste funny. I could only hope that was true.

* * *

><p>I hadn't stayed behind just to escape the vampires. I stayed to bury the dead.<p>

There were nineteen corpses to be located, identified, and laid to rest. I had left them to their own fate. I had abandoned them, just as I had abandoned the White Council before. I felt like I owed them something. Something to make up for it all. Except nothing ever would.

Methodically, I picked up the corpses by their shoulders, and dragged their bodies to a line. As I moved them into place, I pulled the chain of dog tags out from under their shirts. One of the tags I ripped off and placed in my pocket to send back to the White Council later. The other tag I pushed back into place. Then I said a prayer for each. It was a Buddhist prayer because I really didn't know any other; I hoped their spirits would take no offense.

After the seventeenth body, I ran out of corpses.

I looked around carefully, my eyes still affected by the Outsider magic that rolled around me. I saw a faint shimmer about twenty-five yards away. I walked over to it, carrying my backpack with me. The shimmer was faint, but visible out of the corner of my eye. It was low, and dome-shaped.

I touched it, and it collapsed.

A human body lay under it. Someone had cast an invisibility spell on this person, and it was only now breaking down.

She was young, very young, and she was crusted with her own blood. More blood pooled beneath her, far too much of it.

"Lisetta," I breathed.

She opened her eyes slowly.

"George," she said faintly. "Am I dead now?"

"No," my voice cracked.

"But you died. You were drafted with us."

"Yes," I said. "But I ran away on our first mission. I'm still running."

"Oh, George. I ran too. But I came back. And now look what happened to me."

"I'm so sorry, Lisetta," I whispered.

"Tell me how—how you lived," her voice grew weaker.

"It's just—we were apprentices. You can't ask us to go to war against monsters like that. We didn't know what we were doing. No one had prepared us. It was suicide for students to go and fight, and everyone knew it. But no one stopped it. I had to say no. Someone had to say it."

She looked at me sympathetically. "The draft was desperation. We were losing. We're still losing. Losing badly. Everyone on your mission died, George. Your master died. We just assumed you died with them. Maybe you had a premonition."

I started laughing hysterically. "No premonition. Just a coward. Just a scared boy. I am what I am."

She didn't answer me. She was dead.

I cried over her for a long time. She had been a good friend once, in happier times. One thing about Outsider magic and eyesight. It doesn't do a damned thing about tears.

I took her dog tag.

When I couldn't stay with her any longer, I pushed myself off the ground and looked for the last victim. But there was no body. Whoever it had been, he or she was simply gone.

"The traitor," I whispered. "The real one. Gods damn you. Damn you to hell."

When I came back to Lisetta, Jeeves was kneeling on her stomach, his head bowed.

I waited for him. She had been a friend of his, too.

When the time came to perform the burial, it took me a while. The ground was solid stone, and my earth magic is only passable. But when it was done, the rock beneath me was strangely silent and still.


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter Nineteen**

It was still morning. When I had reappeared back in Miami from Nevernever, almost zero time had passed since the moment I had fallen in from the hotel. I was beginning to wonder if maybe that old woman wasn't wrong about the flow of time and the memorial. Maybe time could run a bit backwards there.

Now I sat alone, cross-legged, in the center of the Playhouse stage. The curtains were open, and the empty seats in the darkness had a full view of me. I was thinking.

A part of me wanted to run straight to Emma, no holds barred. To find her. To rescue her. To make things up to her.

The King Richard of myself.

Then again, a part of me wanted to crawl away and die. Or, at least, to crawl away and sleep. I was so weary. I had been through so much, in so little time. I wasn't sure if I could go any further.

The King John of myself. I rubbed my hand across my pink, bald head.

And finally, a part of me wanted to coldly calculate.

The Duke Geoffery II of myself.

It was a new part of me, or rather a part of me that had always been there, but that I had never been all that familiar with. The thing that worried me was, the Geoffrey part of me was starting to assert itself. It was bit by bit winning the war on who I was. Geoffrey died at twenty-seven, being remembered by history for leading an insurrection against his own father _several times_.

I crawled to my feet and wandered through the building, passing places familiar to me—the break room, the dressing rooms, and offices. I paused at the library.

The library was a small, windowless square that held a dusty archive of the scripts of each play performed here. Every inch of the shelving was crammed with yellowed folders, manuals, and compendiums. Many of the scripts had been hand-written. It didn't matter. If they had seen the stage, then the theater remembered.

I pulled some plays down from the shelves at random. _The Foreigner. Doctor Faustus. Hello, Dolly! A Moon for the Misbegotten. Jesus Christ, Superstar. The Producers._ I knew them all, at least moderately. I plopped down into a dust-coated vinyl chair and leafed through them, rolling thoughts around in my head.

"Hello," a woman's voice wafted in through the open doorway. It was Ava.

"Hey," I answered, not looking up from my reading.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Assessing my strengths," I answered.

She cocked her head quizzically, and I looked up.

"I want," I said, "to separate Emma and Calvin from Nawang before dawn. Even if he doesn't just harm them out of malice, Marcone's troops are going to attack him in the morning. They could survive the night, only to be killed in the crossfire tomorrow. And besides, I'm just sick and tired of them getting shitted on by the bad guys all the time."

"And Echemendía?"

"Yeah, him, too. But I don't feel responsible for him. Just charitable."

She came into the room and leaned back on one of the narrow shelves near my chair. I could smell some kind of perfume curling off of her. It reminded me of—I don't know, something happy. Maybe she was trying to make me feel better. But it really wasn't working. There had just been too much sorrow, too much pain.

"I'm not going to fight him head-on with magic or weapons," I said. "I've seen him do things, things that are just way, way beyond me. He's a monster wizard."

"If you say so," she shrugged. "I told you before, he's just a man."

I blinked at her for a moment. "Yeah," I said. "Listen, I'm hatching a plan. It's a very simple one, and it might work. But if it doesn't, there are some things I might need you to do for me."

A small smile crept across her lips. "With pleasure," she answered. "With great pleasure."

I took the plays that I had been reading and set them in a small pile on the shelf next to her. As I did, she took my hand and held it firmly in hers. I expected to feel the testosterone rush, but it didn't come. It was just my hand, and her hand, and the warmth that we exchanged. I closed my eyes.

"Emma's never going to be the same, you realize," she said to me. "You can't expect things to go back to the way they were."

"We already talked," I whispered.

"Good," she said. "So what's your plan?"

I opened my eyes. "We simply have to separate him from them, and bug them out to some place safe. If we're lucky, he still has them out on the yacht, and he's there with them. If they've moved—we'll deal with that if we have to.

"So, the big question is, how do we get him off the yacht? _We_ can't. But he could leave because of someone he fears. So I've been thinking. Who would someone like him fear the most? And the answer to that is easy. A master manipulator like him would fear his closest allies more than anyone else."

"The White Court," Ava said.

I nodded. "He took on some of their people, trained them in magic, but also used them to make money for the Firm. Loads and loads of money. Only now his star pupils are dead. I'd say the White Court is going to want some answers from him."

"So they summon him," Ava finished my thought. "He leaves the boat, and you sneak on board to free Emma and Calvin before he realizes it's a trick and gets back."

I nodded again.

"Simple," she agreed. "But it's been several days now, since you killed his protégés. What if the Court has already summoned him for that talk?"

"We'll have to chance it," I shrugged. "Besides, we don't have to say anything specific in the invitation. They could want to summon him a second time for a follow-up, right?"

"So is that what all these plays are for? Are you girding your loins to impersonate a White Court vampire?"

"Who, me?" I said. "No, I'm just reminding myself about what I'm really good at. And it's simpler than impersonation. We just send a courier with a friendly written invitation. But if you want, _you_ could play a White Court vampire."

"I see," she said doubtfully.

"For one thing, he doesn't know you. And for another, you can just give him a little tweak to let him know your powers."

"My tweaks don't work like their tweaks," Ava shook her head. "A man like Nawang is probably going to be able to spot the difference."

"Then we'll stick to Plan A and just do the invitation. I hope it's enough."

"The simple plans are the best ones, I would think," Ava mused.

"The ones that work are the best ones," the Geoffrey in me said. "The rest are crap."

* * *

><p>"So, who do you want me to shoot at this time?" Fernando asked me with a dry smile. He was leaning against the hood of his black Beemer, flipping around in his fingers the unsealed envelope that I had handed him.<p>

"No shooting," I said. "Um, at least not any more."

"And when exactly do I start charging you for these favors, eh?"

"Tomorrow. By then, it will all be over, one way or another."

"I'm really thinking maybe I should have started billing you in advance, Jorge."

I shrugged. "It's just a courier job. Some flowers, a letter, a package. Easy. Have you ever worked for him before?"

"Yes, I've done jobs for him. I don't like working against one of my own clients, you understand? I could get a reputation that I don't want. May I see the letter?"

I nodded.

He pulled it out and looked at it.

_Kalden Nawang—_

_Your presence is required at the Byrne residence, tonight at nine of the clock post meridiem. Dinner will be served. Dress is semi-casual._

_The courier will accept your reply._

_Yours,_

_Aidan Byrne_

I had gotten Byrne's name and a sample of his handwriting from Ytaiy. Byrne is the master of Miami's Tribunal Chamber of the White Court. If you are a White Court vampire, and you're in Miami, one day or another you're going to be checking in with him. And if you are also doing business in Miami, then you are going to be writing him some checks, too. No exceptions.

"So that's two clients of mine I have to appease. The flowers?" Fernando asked.

I reached into the back of my Scrambler and pulled out a large vase of white lilies.

Fernando took them into his arms, staring at them uncertainly. "And, you say, no shooting?"

I smiled. "Not for you," I said. "And here's the package." I handed him a rolled-up white towel. Jeeves was inside of it. "You just drop this to the deck when you first board the yacht, and pick it back up when you leave."

"And bring it back to you? A message from the ship?"

I shook my head. "A delivery. Try not to play with it."

And that was that.

We were standing next to the Miami City Hall, at the Dinner Key Marina. Fernando would take a small motorboat out to deliver the invitation to Nawang, and be back in a couple of hours to tell me how it went.

It was five o'clock in the afternoon now. Plenty of time. I hoped.

* * *

><p>I spent the next hour at my boat, washing up and getting ready for the night.<p>

I pulled on a faded black tee shirt that said, "I BURNED OUT THE BULB ON MY ASTRAL PROJECTOR." Jeeves kept throwing it out, for some reason. Might have been the holes, or something. I pulled on a pair of canvas cargo shorts with oversized pockets, and found my best pair of flip-flops under the fridge.

When my killer wardrobe was ready, I opened up the one drawer on my boat that I keep padlocked. Reaching inside, I pulled out my father's sword and ring. His sword was a Tibetan dpa'dam. It's a straight-backed short sword. It's old, and he never said where he got it. But he took it with him on his missions as a Warden, when it was time to end his cover and crack heads. But he left it behind on his last mission. I just assumed that meant he was going under cover again.

Swords have a special meaning for wizards. By law, we are not permitted to use magic against each other in a harmful way, at least not directly. But clobbering another wizard with a sharp wedge of metal is okay. Go figure. Another fine convention of the White Council. Nevertheless, it was a law I had to take seriously. That's because the penalty for violating it was to be skewered to death by a Warden. It was one of the things my father had to do, from time to time. He hated it, but executions were a part of his job. He performed them using the very instrument that I was holding in my hand. Sometimes the convicted didn't go quietly, either.

It was a law I couldn't count on Nawang to honor.

The sword had the traditional Tibetan iron trefoil pommel, an angular iron ferrule, a rounded guard with fluted edges on one side with a concave notch on the inside. The pommel was decorated with coral bead. The grip was wooden, but covered with ray skin that never seemed to degrade, even in the Miami heat and humidity. The blade itself bore the traditional hairpin folded pattern.

The scabbard was covered with red fabric, framed with a u-shaped steel frame and a long chased silver panel that was set with three coral beads. On the scabbard's tip was a chased silver button.

I put the scabbard back into the locker, closing it and fastening it. I tied the naked sword to a strap on my backpack, letting it hang free.

I put my father's gold ring on my left middle finger. In retrospect, it might have been a bit of a symbolic gesture to place it on that digit, but truthfully, it was simply the finger on which it fit best, and I didn't want to risk losing it.

I didn't have a focusing rod. I had destroyed it along with my left hand. There wasn't time to make a new one. I still had my thunderbolt scepter, and my daggers, but I was leaving the daggers behind. They weighed too much, and I didn't think I would have the time to summon anything, if it came down to it.

I had no gun. Let's face it—I just suck at shooting them. Better to go with what I can do.

I walked through the cabin, putting things away, making sure the stove was off, doing the things that Jeeves would have done. He was in danger now, and I was lounging around my boat. I owed it to him. I turned off the lights and went up top. A warm breeze was blowing in from the west. I pulled out the horn and blew it, summoning Stanley. He kept staring at me during the ride to shore, as if I might suddenly turn into some kind of man-eating monster.

"It's that wooman, ain't it?" he asked me.

"What about her?" I said.

"I told you before, people die because of woomen like them. I've seen it. Tell me I ain't tellin' you the truth." His eyes wandered behind me, to the sword dangling from my backpack.

"I hope not," I answered.

"He hopes not. Get off my boat, laddie. And stay out of trouble. You're a good kid. Just a little stupid in the head, sometimes, but there's no shame in that."

"See you, Stanley."

"I got work to do." I watched him shuffle back to his little office under the party room.

There was no reason to wait any longer. My loins were fully girded up. I took a final check of myself and my equipment, and walked back to Dinner Key, the sword slapping irritably against my rump, reminding me that it was there. As if I could forget.

* * *

><p>Ava was waiting for me at the marina. She put her hand in the crook of my arm and we walked along the sidewalk by the low sea wall, waiting for Fernando to show. The thousand halyards of the docked sailboats dinged against their aluminum masts arhythmically in the gentle breeze. It's the most relaxing sound in the world.<p>

She guided me to a public dock where she had been making preparations for our mission. In the water bobbed a dark maroon fiberglass canoe.

"Where did you get it?" I asked.

"It's borrowed," she shrugged. "We have to give it back by the morning. I got the other things you wanted, too. There's some fishing net and lightweight chain, and a trolling motor. Oh, and some guy came by and left a black duffel bag. He said you'd want it."

"What guy?"

"I'm not sure. I think it was the man you were talking to at the hotel."

I looked down into the canoe. In the middle squatted a heavy-looking black duffel bag. It looked like the one Angel had offered me.

"I don't want any of that," I sighed.

Just the same, I dropped down into the canoe, steadying it with one hand held against the dock, and tugged open the zipper. I pulled out his camouflage poncho, the one he had worn in the parking garage when I had first met him.

"I bet it's not even waterproof," I muttered. I rifled through the rest of the bag. It was full of all kinds of electronic gear, most of which I didn't even recognize. I picked up a flashbang grenade from the pile. There were five or six tazers.

But there were no guns. Maybe he knew I just didn't want them. Or maybe he didn't want me to kill his teammates. I tossed the grenade back into the bag and zipped it up.

I was tightening the bolts on the battery-powered transom-mount motor when a small Boston Whaler slipped along side of me. It was Fernando, looking a bit smug with himself.

"Smooth as baby ice," he said, throwing my towel at me.

"Nawang?" I asked.

"I have a friend watching the boat. If we are good with the clock, then Nawang is leaving not long before we are arriving."

"Who else did you see?"

"Soldiers for hire. The ones who work for Marcone. I'm thinking they may have changed their colors. I only went upstairs. I didn't see Calvin or Emma."

"No wonder Marcone is taking it so personally," I sat back. "He got himself cuckolded, all right."

Fernando nodded in agreement. "I'm thinking maybe he just looks after his own. It's the eighth hour," he mused. "The waves are light, and the sun is getting dark. This is a good time for you to go."

"Okay, see you in the next life," I stuck my hand out at him. He reached out over the side of his boat and took it, thrashing my arm generously.

As he kicked his engine back to life and circled away, I said, "There goes a man who could scrape the gold from heaven's pavement."

"And get away with it, I think," Ava mused.

She lightly jumped into the canoe, holding her grocery bag in her left hand.

"Ready?" I asked.

She smiled. "Look the other way for a moment. I need a bit of privacy for this."

* * *

><p>Only the faintest grey lined the horizon by the time the canoe neared Nawang's stolen yacht. I was wearing Angel's invisibility poncho. Ava wasn't in the canoe. She was in the water, swimming out ahead of me. Behind me, the electric-powered motor silently pushed the canoe forward.<p>

It was easy to see the yacht. Soft light issued from the salon, even though the shades were closed, and from a few portholes. The side lights were properly lit.

The boat didn't look spooky at all. And yet my hands were perspiring uncontrollably. If I weren't so scared, I'd be embarrassed.

Nawang had left about fifteen minutes ago in the runabout, piloted by the yacht's mechanic—according to Fernando's spy, who was already headed back to the mainland for another job. I wished that I could have kept him around longer, but beggars can't be choosers.

About twenty yards away from the yacht, I stopped the motor, letting the canoe slowly drift forward toward the yacht. I reached down in front of me and grabbed the fishing net. I held it out over the water until a seal head popped out.

She had big, black eyes. I almost fell into them again. Turning my head away, I lowered the net into the lapping water. Ava grabbed it with her teeth and sank below the surface. As quietly as I could, I dropped the chain into the water and let it sink. She'd find it okay, I thought.

Reaching down below my seat, I pulled open my backpack and wormed my hand around the contents until I found a little ceramic bottle. I sat up straight, holding it out in front of me. This was one of my more dangerous potions. It was sort of powerful, but it never worked exactly the same way every time. I pulled out the cork with my teeth, took a deep breath, and poured the think black goop down my throat.

It burned. It tasted like I had just swallowed a jar full of hot, wet sand from the beach. Some of it clung to the insides of my mouth, refusing to be swallowed, too thick to be spat back out.

My skin shivered and crawled. The shivering turned into vibration, the vibration turned into electric twitching. Bit by bit, my skin started to wrinkle, then to pinch together, then to start to fold over on top of itself. It began to callus, and to turn dark. When the dust had settled, my skin was covered with hard little scales. It wasn't a wizard shield. But it might protect me from cutting myself shaving. Anything that could help at all was welcome, as far as I was concerned.

I revved the motor a bit more, turning the canoe to slide up along the port side of the yacht. I put my left hand out to prevent the stern of the canoe from touching the other boat. I slowly pushed the canoe along until I poked out beside the aft entryway.

One of Angel's mercs was standing at the base of the stairs, smoking away at a cigarette. He was looking west, taking in the changing colors of the sky. Smoke swirled around him, carried by the little vortexes of the sea wind. He didn't see me.

He turned to his left and flicked the butt out into the water. As he looked away, I slipped off the poncho and crept onto the deck, the canoe's long tow line wrapped around my left hand. It was time for me to find out whose side he was on, and there was only one way for me to do that.

"Hey," I said.

He whipped around, frantically groping around for the handgun in his hip holster.

"_Jalus_," I whispered, pointing my right index finger at his eyes. A faint whirl of color spread out from my fingertip, bathing his face in gentle, scintillating light.

"Hunh," he said, coming to a stop directly in front of me.

"Just wait a moment," I said, turning around to tie off the canoe to a deck cleat.

"Uh, wait—" he slowly said.

"Hey," I said again. "It's me. Remember?"

His eyes seemed to have trouble focusing on me. "Yeah," he finally pushed the sound out of his mouth. "Yeah."

"And you and I are friends, right?" I stood up again, facing him.

"Yeah, uh. Yeah." He seemed to think about it a bit more. "I have to kill you now."

"No, no," I whispered. "We're friends. Right?"

"Rrr—I have to kill you. I have to follow my orders."

"Whose orders?"

"The man's. The, uh—man's."

"The bald man? Older?"

"He said you might—he said to kill you on sight. Stay there, uh. I gotta get my gun out."

As he reached for his handgun again, I shot him with a stronger hypnotic spray. This time he stood limply, catatonic. Well, the fact that his mind had been magically dominated wasn't any worse than I thought it would be. The trouble is, is I was already expecting the worst.

There was a gentle tug at my pants leg. Jeeves had been standing there at the stern, waiting for me.

"Hey, little dude," I whispered. He gave me a little salute, and held up a piece of paper on which he had drawn with his pencil. I had asked him to draft out a deck plan for me, and to mark where Emma and Calvin were being held. I held it up to look at it in the dim light. In the salon on the main deck, he had drawn five X's for the mercs. There was one X in the flying bridge up top. And one at the stern. A pair of O's indicated the wait staff, who seemed to be holed up in the crew cabins at the bow of the lower deck. He had drawn a trio of hearts for Emma, Calvin, and Echemendía in the VIP cabin in the amidships lower deck, just forward of the engine room. And in the same room, he had drawn a very large X, written over several times to emphasize it.

I counted the X's. Angel had five people with him, and Echemendía had another two. Maybe the big X was for Nawang, I thought to myself.

"Hang out here, little guy," I said, grabbing the merc by the elbow. "Stay in the shadows. I'll pick you up on the way out. As for you, follow me up the stairs and keep quiet."

I put the camouflage poncho back on and cautiously led the merc up two flights of stairs, to the top deck. Most of the flying deck was open-air. Stars and wind wound around us in the near-darkness of the platform.

Dinner plates sat with half-eaten food on a side table next to an open bottle of Chablis. This ship was beginning to feel like the Mary Celeste, except with the crew still on board.

Pushing the merc over to the door of the bridge, I gave the order to open the door. Shuffling like a movie zombie, he complied. One of Echemendía's bodyguards sat in the captain's chair, staring out of the side window. The room was otherwise completely dark.

"_Jalus_," I said, shutting him down.

I pulled the merc with me to the middle of the deck.

"Sit," I said.

Together, we sat cross-legged in the middle of the flying deck. I reached out and took each of his hands into my own.

"Okay," I said. "I'm going to free your mind."

"Hunh," the merc said.

I closed my eyes and let my mind go. I wandered through memories, through fantasies, through dreams. I let my mind float, taking its own path across liquid thought and emotion. I stopped in Nawang's tent. Here is where he devised the magic to dominate the minds of these men. Here I would find my answers. The answer of how to undo what he did.

Ever since the day of Pretzeling the press, I had pondered about what Nawang had done, and how he had done it. I thought about whether it could be undone at all. I thought about the symbols, and their relationship with his energies.

I didn't know much. But I remembered that day photographically. Nawang had ensured that I would. I could repeat every nuance of what he did, even if I didn't comprehend it all.

Mentally reaching my hand out, I began to pick out symbols from the tent. Everything I did was intuitive. It was the best that I could do. I sifted through the lines of thought that tied the mercs to Nawang's force of will, saw the magical constructs that held them taut, vibrating rhythmically as if in the sea wind. I used the symbols to slightly alter the meaning of the magical engines. I created a weak spot in the line, and then, with a little force of will, I severed the lines.

The merc screamed. More screams came from below.

"No!" he wailed. "Master, I need you!"

"You're free," I said.

I looked up at me, his chin trembling. "I'll never be free," he said. "Never."

"You're free," I said again.

He looked at his hands, turning them back and forth.

"Dios mio," he whispered hoarsely. "Did you get everyone?"

I nodded. "At least, everyone on the boat. I can't speak for all the other people he's dominated over the years. I need to get Calvin and Emma off of the boat. Do you think you can help me?"

He blanched. "You haven't been down there, have you? You need to get off of the ship right away. Forget the others. You need to get out of here."

"Why?" I asked.

But he just stood up, looking around confusedly. "I can't stay here," he said absently. "I have to find a lifeboat."

"Nawang took the runabout."

"Let me talk to the others. We all need to go."

"What's down there?" I asked again.

"Effing monster, that's what. Some spawn of Hell vomited up on Mother Earth. It's keeping your friends company." He ran over to the bridge and opened the door. "Mario!" he shouted through the doorway.

Mario was holding a gun to his head, ready to pull the trigger.

"Come on, Mario, we have to get you away," I said.

He looked at us like he had never seen human beings before. "I can't live, remembering what he did to me," he said. "I have been dishonored in ways I could never imagine. He raped my mind. He raped my _mind_."

"I can help you get him back," I said.

He laughed. "Ten of you couldn't take down a man like that. Twenty of you couldn't do it." But at least he dropped the gun down into his lap.

"Let's get everyone together," I said. "Time is short." I whirled around and hoofed it down the steps to the main deck.

Inside the salon, four other mercs sat on the teak floor, curled up in the fetal position. The first I looked at just stared back at me quietly, unmoving.

"Get up," I growled at them.

The closest one to me pushed himself up into a sitting position, but didn't stand. He just stared off into the distance, ignoring me.

The furthest one from me finally seemed to notice me. "It's you," he said slowly. "The one we were supposed to kill. The—one who was with Echemendía."

"Yes," I said.

He looked around the room thoughtfully. He pulled his pistol out of his shoulder holster and checked it, loading a bullet into the chamber.

"My name is Terry," he told me.

"George," I answered.

"Pleased to meet you. Very pleased, I'm pretty sure. Was that you who—you know—"

I nodded.

"Very pleased, then. If we live, I'll tell the boss you helped us out."

"He may not like owing me," I smiled.

"I don't give a shit what he likes, never have," he answered. "Anyway, he has a way of taking his debts and making it so that you somehow owe him more. I don't know how he does it, but I've seen it. So you don't worry about him. In fact, I can just keep mum about it, if you want."

"I like mum," I said. I didn't want anything more to do with Marcone after tonight.

"Just the same, I owe you something personal. Name your favor."

"I want to rescue the people downstairs."

He paused, thinking about it. "Tall order. Don't think we can do that."

"I won't make you," I said.

"Have you seen the creature?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"Wet my pants when I first set eyes on it. I'm not kidding, either. That's a mean mother down there."

"What is it?"

He shrugged. "There's people in our company that deal with—there's talk, you see. But you never take any of it seriously. I mean—come on, monsters from other dimensions? And we do _business_ with them? Like, what could we possibly sell to something like that? And then, you know, you decide it's best not to think about that question too hard."

"So, what's it look like?"

"Like a ball-crushing demon from Perdition, that's what. Horns on his goddam animal head, and skin leaking out poison, like some kind of South American tree frog. Too big to stand up straight down there. Biceps like freight train piston arms." He thought a little more. "Probably need a fifty-cal to take something like that down."

That was a demon, all right. Buddah's—oh, forget it.

The side door opened, and the last merc filed in from his station at the bow, looking like he had just finished vomiting.

"Who wants to help out?" Terry looked around the room

"Fuck that, Terry," the merc who I had first met spat out angrily. "The thing's down there, and we're just standing here like it's fuckin' Sunday afternoon. We've got to abandon ship, and we got to do it _now_."

"Ain't no _boats_," Terry shot back. "Nawang took the runabout."

"Could we push the monster overboard, and hit the engines?" one of Echemendía's guards mused.

"Who's gonna do _that_?" the first merc snorted in derision.

"Anyway, the props are disabled," I said. "I wrapped them in chains before coming on board. Didn't want to get chased down after the heroic rescue."

"Then we fuckin' _swim_," the merc retorted. "Every minute we dick around, the chances of us all living goes down."

"Anyone who wants to go, then go," I said, "on two conditions. First, you leave the canoe out back alone. It's for the rescue, and not of you. Second, that you do it quiet."

"You have a boat?" the merc turned to me.

"Hey, Cameron, you ball-licker," Terry hissed. "He just saved your stupid ass. So you just make nice."

Cameron turned his head away. "Okay," he muttered. "It's a deal. Who's jumpin' in the water with me?" Both of Echemendía's personal guard stood up, and two more of Marcone's men moved to the salon door.

"See you back at the base," Terry said acidly.

"No, you won't," Cameron said. "That's the tragedy. And just you remember, there's more of us from our team leaving than staying."

"There's life preservers in the locker by the ramp," I said to Cameron's back.

"I know," he said without turning his head back to speak to me.

That left three mercs with me. The captain remained a mystery. And Emma and company—I just didn't want to think about it.

"Will he take the canoe?" I asked Terry.

He shook his head. "He's honorable, in his own way. But you can be honorable and an asshole at the same time. In fact, most of the time they seem to go together, now that I think about it."

"The thing is," I mused, "Cameron might be right. Nawang's not going to be gone very long. If it takes us all night to fight the demon, Nawang will just come back, and there's no stopping him. So whatever we do, it has to be fast, and it has to be now."

"Huh," Terry looked me up and down appraisingly. Er, make that skeptically. "Ever taken on one of those bastards before?"

"Sure," I grinned stupidly. "Common as cockroaches."

Terry cracked his neck. "Guess that makes you the brains. God help us."

"Look, here's the thing," I said. "I don't care if we kill it or not. My only goal is rescue. If we can distract it long enough to dig them out and get away, I'd call that a success."

"Huh," Terry mumbled in thought. "Hey, Bone, how much detcord you got?"

"Some," the shortest of the three mercs grunted with a voice like a grizzly bear. "Fifteen feet. Had to use a rope in Honduras."

"Oh, yeah." Terry rolled his eyes around, ruminating. "That'd make a nice hole in the wall between the engine room and the VIP cabin, you think?"

Bone smiled. "Count off 180. You want it behind the closet or over the bed?"

"Smack in the middle, over the bed" Terry said. "No sense getting all coy about it. Besides, they'd just get their necks tangled up in the clothes hangers, with luck like ours." The mercs nodded at each other and set their watches.

The last merc of the three was a young woman with short black hair and a deeply tanned body. She hadn't said anything at all during the conversation. She was amusing herself by running a sharpening stone along the edge of a bowie knife. Her eyes shone with a fey light. I didn't try to strike up a conversation with her. I afraid I might find out what she was thinking.

"Okay, brains, how do you want to distract the horn-miester?" Terry glanced over at me while he set up a machine gun nest in the corner of the salon opposite of the downstairs staircase.

"I'm going to pique its curiosity," I answered.

"Oh?"

I unzipped Terry's black duffel bag and rifled through it, pulling out items and tossing them behind me while the two mercs glared at me.

"Here we are," I said, grabbing a handful of flash-bangs and setting them on the floor. I grabbed my own backpack and tossed it outside, keeping the sword. "You two ready for a showdown?"

They loaded the chambers of their weapons.

I tossed three flash-bangs in succession down the staircase to the lower deck. Within three seconds they had each gone off with an earsplitting report. Terry and Fey-Girl aimed their machine guns out the back door and fired a few bursts.

"Fall back!" I yelled. "Fall back!" For good measure, I threw a couple more flash-bangs down the stairwell.

The floor beneath us suddenly buckled, the teak floorboards splitting and splintering, nails popping up into the air. Suddenly, the floor gave way and a massive head poked out. It wasn't exactly the route that I thought it would take. But it was a distraction, of sorts.

Looking through the gaping hole in the floor, I could see Emma, Calvin, and Echemendía, still sitting on the bed, their hands tied behind their backs. They were staring back at me, a look of shock on their faces.

The demon was staring at me too. Staring hard.

I turned to look at it more closely, and suddenly gulped down dry air.

"**_You_**." the demon growled.

Of all the demons for Nawang to summon, he just had to go and summon Omwor-ust to be his baby sitter. Nothing but the best for Nawang.

Holy scones.

I found myself backing up to the wall reflexively. The other two mercs set their machine guns and laid into the demon. Its flesh quivered as massive numbers of bullets punctured its skin. But no blood trickled out of its wounds. The thing was, it had no wounds at all. It was just absorbing the bullets into its body like they were rays of sunshine.

Terry stopped firing and slowly lowered his gun.

"Oh, shit," he said.

"Now's a good time to retreat," I said, my voice coming out with a strangely high pitch.

Omwor-ust pointed a clawed finger at me and I flew forward. He caught me in one outstretched hand, wound up, and flung me back to the wall. I cracked my head on the shaded window and slid to the floor. My sword clattered to the floor and bounced to the edge of the hole, tipping slowly before sliding down and dropping to the room below.

The two mercs had already split apart, each making for a different door.

The bedroom wall downstairs blew open, sending Calvin tumbling off of the bed. A pair of long arms reached out of the smoking hole and grabbed Emma and Echemendía, yanking them off the bed and into the engine room in one motion.

Omwor-ust ducked down to peer into the hole through which his charges were escaping. "_**Fools,**_" it said. "_**Death is your only providence.**_"

The demon pulled itself up out of the hole into the salon, its massive frame bowed down under the low ceiling, and rammed its way out the back door through which Terry had already escaped.

I crawled through the broken glass, watching helplessly as the demon leapt down to the ramp by the water. The little canoe had already cast off, and was puttering away with Emma, Echemendía, and Bone. Emma was looking back towards us, her face wooden. Bone didn't look back at all.

"Go, Emma, go," I whispered.

The demon let out a ferocious roar that rattled the yacht. Loose bits of glass tinkled down around me. Being a demon, it couldn't cross the water. I looked around the perimeter of the yacht, and saw Terry and his comrade in arms swimming out to sea behind the canoe.

That's when I noticed Calvin sneaking out of the engine room's back door, onto the back boat ramp with the demon, my sword in his hands. Bits of cut rope were still wrapped around his wrists. Tiptoeing on bare feet, he quickly closed in on the roaring demon, raised the sword high over his head with both hands, and plunged it halfway into Omwor-ust's back.

The demon's scream rolled through me, reverberating around my head, leaving me woozy. I blinked a few times. When I could see again, Calvin was on his knees, his head held up by the hair in the demon's left claw.

"Thought I wouldn't go all aggro, didn't you? Didn't think I'd do it, did you?" Calvin's voice reached me.

"_**Worship me to save your skin,**_" Omwor-ust growled down at Calvin, shaking his head back and forth.

"Aikona," Calvin spat back.

"So be it," the demon growled. Holding Calvin in its left claw, the demon reached into the engine room and yanked out some piece of heavy machinery. I couldn't tell what it was. It could have been some part of the engine itself, or some supporting equipment. The demon pressed the metal up against Calvin's chest. Wreaths of smoke undulated around its claws and around Calvin, congealing into a set of heavy-looking chains. Calvin slumped under their weight.

I stood up.

"Wait!" I cried out. "Hey, stupid! It's me you want! He's just a bystander."

"_**You wish for him to escape? Allow me to assist,**_" the demon called back in his low, growling voice. He picked Calvin up with one arm and simply tossed him over the side of the yacht, chains, machinery, and all.

"Calvin! Son of a—!" I cried out, caught by horror and disbelief.

Calvin was gone, under the waves that he had loved. There wasn't even a ripple to mark where he had gone in.

"Calvin!" I cried out again. But there was nothing I could do. He was simply gone, dragged down to the bottom by the enormous weights that were wrapped tightly around him.

The demon pointed a claw at me again. This time my body seized up, my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth. My body flew backwards into the salon, flipping over the soft couch, landing gracelessly on the floor in a heap.

I groaned.

A star-lit shadow fell over me.

Omwor-ust touched me gently with its right claw, rolling me onto my stomach. I didn't resist. My strength seemed to be drained away. I just wanted to fall asleep. I felt my hands being forced together behind my back, being wrapped with something sticky.

I was lifted up into a sitting position, facing the demon.

"_**A Pyrrhic victory for you.**_"

I nodded, looking away. Tears ran freely down my scaly face. "You win some, you lose some," I said. It was a lame thing to say, but there wasn't much point in coming up with a witty retort. "Where's the captain?" I managed to ask thickly.

"_**He died at the hands of my summoner,**_" the demon said.

"Just you and me on the boat, then. So what's it to be?" I asked.

"_**I am not permitted to leave the ship at this time,**_" Omwor-ust said. "_**I shall explore the kitchen to find instruments to help me pass the hours with you.**_"

"Nawang might not like that," I said. "He likes me a lot."

"_**He instructed me to destroy you. I find we share many interests.**_"

"Groovy," I said dryly. "Won't Nawang be pissed off at you for killing one of your prisoners? Was Calvin in your care, or wasn't he?"

The demon eyed me coldly in lieu of answering. It turned away and pushed its huge body through the small forward hatch just beyond the ladder up to the bridge, my father's sword still sticking halfway into its back.

"And it's not a kitchen, it's a _galley_, you ignoramus!" I yelled through the mangled doorway. "And bring me a cup of coffee!"

I repeatedly banged my head against the hull behind me in frustration. It wouldn't be long now before Nawang figured out he'd been had and came back. I couldn't think of anything more awful than to be tortured and maimed by an angry demon, only to be saved by Nawang. If he even wanted to bother saving me.

The noise of wholesale destruction reached me from the galley. Metal, glass, and wood was being strewn about indiscriminately, sometimes dropped to the floor, sometimes kicked out of the way. Cabinet doors were simply pulled off their hinges rather than opened and closed.

A few minutes later, the demon tromped back into the salon, its arms filled with treasures it had found—knives of all sizes, a rolling pin, a toaster, and other things that I didn't even recognize. It dumped them on the dining table in a heap, and began to sort through them, arranging them—I could only assume in chronological order. Omwor-ust had clearly planned for a long, long session with me.

As the giant demon worked, a small movement from the aft door caught my eye. The light was dim back there, but at first it looked like a small bag was quietly crawling its way through the door. It was my backpack, and it was being pushed by Jeeves. When it finally cleared the threshold, Jeeves poked his head out from behind the pack and waved at me.

Slowly and carefully, I worked my rump over the top of my bound hands. I stretched one foot and leg through the circle of my arms, and then the other leg, leaving my wrists in front of me instead of behind me. They were wrapped with some kind of black cord that looked like dark licorice, but was tougher and sticker than rope.

I held my hands up to Jeeves, stopping him from coming any closer. There was no way to know when the demon would turn around to deal with me, and I didn't want Jeeves near me when that happened. I put my hand up to my face with my thumb and pinky extended to my mouth and right ear, pantomiming a phone. Jeeves nodded and started rummaging through the backpack. In a few moments, he had pulled it out and flipped it open.

My hands flashed out the numbers and function buttons that I wanted Jeeves to press. I had to spell out what I wanted with crystal clarity, because I would probably only get one shot at it, and what Jeeves dialed in had to be absolutely perfect or else nothing would work.

Omwor-ust turned to me before I finished, glaring at me icily. "_**You have freed your hands,**_" he growled. "_**For your willfulness, I shall cut them off.**_"

"It's not like I'm going to need them," I rolled my eyes dramatically.

It turned back to the table to continue its sorting, but it also began to surreptitiously glance back at me from time to time to see what I was doing. I drew up my knees and kept my hands behind my legs to hide them from view, flashing more quickly now.

And then I was done.

Jeeves pressed the last button, watched the screen change color, and closed up the phone.

I couldn't stop myself from audibly sighing, which drew another glance from the demon. I smiled at it gamely. In all likelihood, I was still going to die today. That fact infuriated me. All I had to do was make it out of the salon and dive overboard to live. But I would never be fast enough to do that. I knew it, and Omwor-ust knew it.

The demon took its time on purpose, making me anticipate my pain with each instrument that it touched, maximizing my fear and horror. When, minutes later, it turned back to face me, it was holding up a cleaver.

I gulped audibly.

"_**I have reassessed my priorities,**_" it said.

"You shouldn't do anything special on my account," I said.

It took a step towards me. Two steps. It covered a lot of ground with those long legs. Three steps.

And then it hesitated.

"_**Who**_—?" it muttered. Suddenly, Omwor-ust let the cleaver fall out of its claw, letting it drop to the floor, where it stuck between the teak floorboards, quivering. It pressed its claws up to its head, closing its eyes in what might have been pain.

It opened its eyes again and stared at me. "_**What have you done, mortal?**_" it whispered.

"Who me?" I said. "I'm just sitting here, waiting to be chopped up. What else would I be doing?"

"_**I am being summoned. Not by one, but by a multitude. What have you done?**_" it cried out. It raised its head and bellowed out a call of anguish.

"There's this thing called the Internet," I used my hands to rub the perspiration from my brow. "It's sort of new, but a lot of the followers of the occult have started communicating with it.

"It sort of looks to me," I added, "like someone might have tweeted your proper name to the whole world. And if enough people are interested, they might try to summon you. All at the same time."

Omwor-ust looked down at me in horror. "_**I—I am being torn apart! Stop them!**_"

I stood up. "Where's my father?" I asked it quietly.

"_**Go to Hell,**_" it spat out bits of its own tongue.

I stood face to face with it, letting it die a little longer.

The demon's screams increased. Its right arm began to disappear, replaced with an oily cloud of smoke. It fell to its knees, its body wracked with spasms as a hundred different summoners competed to pull the demon into a hundred different circles simultaneously.

I stepped behind the demon and grabbed my father's sword with both hands, yanking it out. Black blood vomited out of the wound, splashing in thick globs on the wooden floor, setting tiny spontaneous fires wherever it fell. I hefted the sword up like a baseball bat. Omwor-ust's screams reached a crescendo, shattering some of the windows, throwing me back towards the gaping hole in the floor. I pushed myself forward and took a wide swing at the demon's neck, which itself was now visibly boiling and popping. The sword connected, driving clean through immortal bone and muscle in one blow, snapping the demon's head high into the air, while its body remained stock-still.

And then the headless body erupted in a flowery white explosion, throwing me and the sword backwards, spilling me across the threshold of the hole. I fell, and the sword fell.

I was unconscious from the shockwave before I even landed.

* * *

><p>When I awoke, the first thing my eyes saw upon opening was the crooked mass of stars in the graying night sky, wheeling freely above me. On second thought, it was my head that was wheeling, and the stars were fine. I could live with that.<p>

I was lying on my back, on a bed that would have been comfortable if it weren't for all the sharp pieces of hull material that surrounded and blanketed me. My skin-scale potion was still working, although I could tell that it was on its last legs. Still, I was grateful that it was functioning at all; without it, I would have long ago turned into a human pin-cushion from all the flying debris.

There was no ceiling above me. The top half of the yacht was simply gone. Or rather, it was lying on top of me in little bite-sized slivers.

The bed squeaked and jingled as I slowly rolled my body to the floor, where I found my father's sword, punched halfway to the hilt into the teak starboard wall. Behind me, the hole through which Emma and the others had escaped through the engine room still smoldered around the edges.

"The insurance company's gonna spit," I muttered to myself.

It took several tugs to pull the sword completely out of the wall. The demon's blood had congealed around it, gluing it into place. When I finally got it free, several strings of black stretched from the blade back to the slit in the wall. I hacked at them repeatedly, holding my nose with one hand to hold the stench of rot at bay, until they finally dangled to the floor like jellyfish tendrils, picking up bits of fiberglass and wire where they touched ground, stretching longer with each step I took. I tried to wipe the blade off along the bed's comforter, but just ended up with bits of fluff clinging to the goop, making my father's sword look something like an anorexic Komondor.

The stepladder up was choked with debris, but I managed to clamber up to what was now the yacht's outer deck. A warm, wet breeze wormed its way across the boat, tickling the bits of hair that poked out of my scalp. Night still lay ascendant above me, but the hours of morning beckoned.

I worked my way around the edge of the hole in the floor towards the rear of the boat, dragging my sword along with me, my eyes sliding back and forth, looking for some sign of Jeeves.

That's when I noticed the candle burning on the center of the patio table near the staircase down to the ramp. A figure sat behind it, enveloped with shadow.

The candle's flame didn't flicker one millimeter, in spite of the strong wind.

"Shit," I muttered.

The figure seemed to stir a little.

I sighed and kept walking forward. There was no running, now. I didn't have it in me, and even if I did, I didn't have the power to hold Nawang off.

He eyed me silently until I stood a few paces away. His eyes slid down me to the sword in my right hand, and he snorted, a mixture of amusement and mild disbelief.

"Was the blade intended for me, then?" he asked me coolly in Tibetan.

"No, not really," I answered. "I was hoping to be gone before you got back."

"You couldn't anticipate that I would leave guards behind?" he frowned.

"Sure," I said. "But sometimes you have to take the gamble when you can."

"So, you achieved your goals, and sacrificed yourself. I wonder if you think that makes you worthy, or merely stupid."

"Can't I be both?" I said.

He grunted.

I shrugged.

Nawang looked down at the sword in my hand again. "Yours?" he said.

"Father's."

"Shameful how you treat your father's things." He lifted up his left hand and pushed it out towards me. My father's sword suddenly ripped itself from my grip, flying back behind me, twirling through the air, the bits of debris whirling around it like a bola as it spun. It flew past the bow of the yacht, finally splashing into the black and white ocean. The ripple lasted less than a couple of seconds.

"Dammit!" I yelled. "I told you, that was my father's!"

"You should learn not to be careless with the things entrusted to you."

"You're one to talk."

"I'm speaking of the knowledge rattling around in your head."

"Like I said."

"True enough. So I've decided that tonight I'm going to erase the runes that I gave you—"

"Gave me!" I hissed.

"Gifted to you, yes. That is my bargain with you. In return, I will let you live. In so doing, I am doing you a favor. If you keep the runes and do not train with them, if you do not learn to control them, then with each day that passes, they will pose a greater danger to you and the people around you."

"And that is all that you will do? Remove the runes?"

He sighed. "I cannot be so precise. They have begun to spread throughout your brain. I shall have to cut out much of your recent memory. Perhaps the last year's worth."

"Forget it," I said.

"Then train with me. It is your only hope. Otherwise, I cannot say what kind of monster you will become in time."

"A monster either way, you mean. Forget that, too."

"I am obliged to take you literally, lobsang."

"No, wait—"

He lifted up his left hand towards me, his fingers twisted into a pretzel-like gesture. "Enter my dream, child."

The night claimed me where I stood.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter Twenty**

Rain? Really? Freezing _rain_?

Huh. It never rained in _my_ dreams. But then again, I wasn't the architect of my personal dream world.

Angry black wisps of storm clouds rolled across the long wooden deck that I found myself standing on. The air was painfully thin, but that didn't stop it from slashing its way around my soaked and chilled body, pushing me aside from its path, thunder and flashes of burning light driving it forward.

Rising up before me stood the silhouette of a temple, its triangular flags flapping frantically in the arms of the storm cloud that surrounded us. I could see the reds and yellows of them begin to bloom in the growing light of the sun, as it surmounted the horizon behind me.

To the left and right of me stood tall vertical banks of ancient iron drums, spinning wildly in the wind, clacking woodenly with each rotation they completed. Counting. If this were a real temple before me, I'd say that they were counting the prayers that made their way to the gods. But here, there was no telling what Nawang was adding up. The drums felt cold and mechanical to me, like I had dropped into the guts of a Babbage difference engine, its gears and wheels feeding upon the very numbers that they chewed. As alien as the imposed magic that clattered around my head.

The deck shifted at my feet, rolling gently. Like a boat.

Turning back toward the light of the rising sun, I pushed my way through the storm to the wooden railing that circumscribed the temple, bending over it to peer down. Through the passing cloud, I could see, far below, the web-like lights of a modern city, still enveloped in the darkness before the dawn.

Sheets of rain dropped from the clouds to the city beneath, turning the lights into a golden haze.

I pushed the semi-frozen droplets away from my brow and turned back to the wide staircase that rose up to the bronze-encased temple doors. You had to give Nawang credit. It wasn't good enough for him to dream about a temple. He had to dream about a house of the gods, rolling across the sky with the clouds.

_Which god?_ I wondered. _One who still trod the mortal soil below? Or one who had moved on, to wherever the gods go when we don't want them any more?_

Thunder and lightning curling around the floating temple, I pushed my way toward the staircase, my lungs working hard to process the meager, icy air. My legs pumping, I clomped up the wooden staircase.

Through the grinding wind, I made out the hunched forms of three dirty-looking people, huddled miserably around a meager dung fire, the water and mist suffocating it. They had propped up a makeshift roof over the fire out of an animal skin and sticks, but the rain just crawled underneath it anyway.

The three of them ignored me as I approached. They were wearing bits of animal skins for clothing, and there was something wrong with their physical features.

Cave men, I realized. Two men and a woman.

The old man was humming a soft tune, perhaps as a prayer to any god who might listen and show just one day of mercy. The younger man stared fixedly out into the brightening sky, one hand gripped around a sharpened rock. The woman sat with her head half-drooped down, gazing through the dripping water into the embers of the fire, perhaps vainly willing the warmth back to life.

I stopped and peered at them through the drifting wet that rolled around us. What was Nawang trying to show me? The first morning of human magic? The primal needs that lie restlessly at the root of every incantation ever voiced? The need to live, to hunt, to prosper?

What?

I stepped past them and pulled open the pair of temple doors. They were massive, maybe a ton or so each, but so perfectly balanced that I could open them both at the same time, one in each hand.

Incense blew past me from inside, making my eyes itch and water.

I tromped inside, water dripping off of me onto a stone floor. I wiped the last of the droplets off of my cheeks and away from my eyes. I was in a long hallway, rows of pillars marching away into the shadow. The center line of the roof had been raised along the length of the hall, letting in the gray light of the newborn daybreak along with the random, burning white flashes of lightning bolts.

My eyes slid down from the ceiling to the floor, where I first noticed the body lying on the massive hand-woven rug that ran from the doorway into the darkened distance. I stepped closer and kneeled down, bending forward to see the front of the corpse.

The body had my face.

It was me, lying dead on the floor, a black pool of blood spreading out into the carpet beneath my cold carcass.

"O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space—were it not that I have bad dreams," I gently whispered to my corpse.

A note written in a flowing hand in Old Tibetan was pinned to the front of my corpse's shirt. "_No offensive artifice this time._" it said. "_Ran for it immediately. Made it the furthest to the door. Will install a second rear guard to counter._"

I harrumphed and kept walking.

The temple was strangely empty of the trimmings and holy bric-a-brac that normally accumulates in places of worship, until they start to look like a haven for hoarders, or for pious bower birds. Perhaps those things held no meaning to Nawang. Or perhaps this represented an actual place from his deep memory, and the emptiness of the temple told of some real loss.

More of my corpses begin to show up, having died in various horrible ways. Sometimes I had burned to death, other times bludgeoned. Sometimes I just couldn't tell. Each of my corpses had a note pinned to it, describing in scientific terms how I had died and what I had tried to do to live.

_Child employed a typical fire-based spell. Energy output was disappointing. Killed by lightning strike._

_Use of magic is occasionally imaginative but limited to specific sphere of thought. Must think he is still in the real world. Attempted to use wind to blow self up to ceiling to escape. Killed after I turned raindrops to micro-meteorites._

_This time resorted to fisticuffs. Is either untrained in martial arts, or unmindful. Stung to death by mass of scorpions._

_Passively sat on the ground and refused to cooperate. Not quite a strategy, but at least offered a unique approach. Snapped neck._

The pile of my bodies got thicker the further into the shadow I walked.

I passed through a low archway into a round room that was almost pitch black. The walls and hardwood beams were coated with black shiny lacquer. A pair of iron sconces hung from the wall at each side of the arch within the room, each bearing a wooden torch that had long since spent their fuel and now burned with embers trapped under a cracked layer of white ash.

In the bits of light, I could barely make out the form of a crocodile laying in the middle of the floor, its body curled into a loose ball.

Its eyes were open, and shone like dark gemstones.

"The front door was open," I said to it, jerking my thumb back over my shoulder.

The torches burst to life, blue flames twisting around their ashen ends. In the light, I could now see that beyond this room, there was one more. It was empty except for a modern operating table in the center, a bright light illuminating it. It looked exactly like the table that Emma had been stretched out upon.

"Lay on it," the crocodile hissed softly.

"With you as the surgeon?" I asked.

"My art is as old as life itself," it said. "Memory and life are the same."

"Then you are asking me to die," I replied.

"Such concepts are a pointless illusion. If only you could see yourself as I do—as the formulation of your own thoughts, made into the semblance of substance. But if you choose to think of it in life and death terms, then consider that in losing your past, you buy back your lost future."

"It doesn't look like I agreed with you," I said, looking behind me at my pile of bodies. A pair of shadows hovered in the darkness on the other side of the archway, blocking the passing back to the temple's entrance.

"You only need agree once," it answered.

"You could take it from me by force," I murmured.

"I could. The effect is superior with a willing partner. I am patient. You will succumb eventually."

"That's where your problem is," I smiled with grim determination. "Two problems, really."

It looked at me passively.

"If I accept what you are showing me, then even if I die, I still come back anyway. If it's a stalemate, I can accept that. But I don't accept it. You are a liar, sir. I know you to be one, and I believe that these bodies are merely the trappings of your twisted world."

I held my hand up, palm out.

"I reject your world. I want another."

And tore open a Way in front of me. It wasn't magic that I used, exactly. It was more of an expression of will. It was like an inverse tulpa, the ripping away of my accepted reality, to be replaced with nothing. I didn't know where the hole went. Or what kind of metaphor it stood for in the world of dreams. But it was a door of a kind, and I wasn't going to just sit around and decide if I liked it better where I was. I stepped forward, into darkness, an angry hiss erupting far behind me.

* * *

><p>And was back in the temple, right where I had stepped out.<p>

But it wasn't the same, either. The torches were brighter, and threw a healthy red light around the room. There was no surgery table in the room beyond, but an empty stone altar instead.

And the bodies—they weren't mine.

But there sure were a lot of them, lying in the same places and in the same positions where mine had been in Nawang's dream. They were dressed in silk robes of bright orange and yellow, and their feet were bare.

All of them men, of many ages but mostly in the middle to older range. Tibetan. All bald. And definitely none of them were me. Even though it looked like they had died in exactly the same ways that Nawang had depicted me.

It should have been deeply disturbing. But that's the thing about dreams. You accept what is.

"Who comes?" the wavering voice of an elderly woman carried to me from the darkness of the main room, spoken in Tibetan.

"Just a visitor," I answered in kind. I looked behind me. The illusionary tear in space had closed behind me.

"What do you represent?" she asked. "Are you intended to be one of the grandchildren that they would never have?"

I looked down at them. "Who are they?"

A figure hobbled towards me from the gloom, a woman wrapped in badly dyed sack-cloth, hood pulled forward over her brow, enshadowing her face. Wisps of pepper-grey hair poked out from under her hood like the straws from an over-used broomstick.

"They are all that I am left with. They are my memory," she said. "And when I die, and I pray it be soon, they will vanish with me."

"Were they real people? What is this place?"

"Stranger, I was here when it happened, all those years ago. But the killers let me live. I don't think that they even noticed me. I was just the scrubbing girl. Sometimes I gave joy to the men, before— I was pretty then, very pretty. It was a good life.

"Truthfully, I do not know much about the men, other than how they died. You understand, this was not their permanent monastery. They only gathered here on the mountain for their meetings, coming from all over Tibet. They spoke of things that were over my poor head. The Outside Gate of this, and the Spirit Courts of that. But I did know that there were always one hundred and eight of them, no more, no less. I knew that because I was responsible for arranging their meals to be made in the village while they were in session."

"The Spiral," I whispered.

"Yes, yes, they used that word," she seemed more animated at the memory, and drew nearer to me. "Who are you, if not a ghost? You seem so familiar."

I looked around. "I only count about sixty bodies," I said.

She nodded glumly. "Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Only sixty-four. The other forty-four rose up and killed them. I watched while it happened.

"I had been with the men who died, and I had been with the men who killed. I still wonder how one could be different from the other. They all loved me the same."

"No one came for them?" I shuddered involuntarily at her words. "No one told you who they were?"

"Not afterwards, no. No one came. The villagers had to take care of the bodies. We didn't have enough wood up here to cremate them properly, so we had to bury them under stones. It was a terrible memory. No one comes here now, except in our dreams.

"But—" she hesitated. "There _was_ someone else on that day. A woman, dressed in a man's armor. She had a pair of children's skulls dangling off of her thick belt by red ropes. And—she had terrible fangs. She came after it was all over, at dusk, and whispered with the men who lived. She seemed very pleased with herself."

"_Her_?" I said, disbelievingly. "You couldn't mean—"

"No, not _her_, you stupid child. You think I would survive a meeting with _her_? But one of her handmaidens, I sometimes wonder."

"Or one of her children," I said.

She shrugged. "I do not speak of such things. It would be improper."

The sound of metal tearing burst out from behind me. The fabric of the woman's dream screeched like the agonized sound of a car being torn apart by machinery. I looked back, and a man-sized hole was nearly fully dilated, the blackness of void beyond its threshold. The crocodile poked its head through and looked around casually and deliberately before the rest of the creature crawled through. It impossibly stood up on its hind legs like a man.

"You—" the woman moaned at the sight of the crocodile. "Go away, I beg you! I do not love you, now!"

Step by slow step, the crocodile padded towards us, its eyes matching the void behind the door, its head slowly scanning this way and that, taking in the nature of the dream around it.

"I am not here for you, woman. But it is worse for you that I now know you exist," the crocodile hissed through its black snout.

"Wake up," I said to her. "You have to wake up."

"I—" she stuttered.

The crocodile raised up one claw and pointed it at the woman. She suddenly froze, encased in a shimmering web of minute lights that ran along her body like little cars on midnight freeways.

"I came for you, Cimba," the crocodile said.

"This is your dream, too, isn't it?" I said.

"Not at all," the crocodile said. "This is her dream, in her mind. I do not know how you found her, but it is forbidden for us to be here. Your White Council would execute you, in fact. It is imperative to your good health that you come back with me before you are discovered."

I took in a ragged breath. "That's why you didn't enter the minds of the journalists. You made them enter yours. It wasn't because you had some fancy technique. You were just shooting for another legal loophole, weren't you?"

"When one wishes to change the universe, one changes oneself," Nawang said. "It's axiomatic. The legalities were secondary."

"Bullshit," I said. "You're afraid of the White Council."

The crocodile stood silently, its empty eyes fixed upon me.

"You were one of the forty-four," I pressed. "Those bodies of mine in the dream you showed me, they were really these bodies, weren't they?"

"Come away from this place," the crocodile said. "This pain was not meant for you."

"I wonder if it was meant for the men here, either," I pointed at their bodies.

"We could not agree on what to do about the invasion," the crocodile hissed out. "The old men wanted to capitulate. The young men wanted to defend. We drew up into two camps, with no agreements. Anger mounted on both sides. It was inevitable that we would devolve into civil war."

"Civil war?" I said. "Did the men who lay here even know that's what it was? How long did this war last? A minute? Five?"

"You mock what you do not understand. You can never know how painful it was. But at the time, we saw no other path. We took the hard road. We took the road of duty to our land."

"Who was your guru?" I asked.

I could almost imagine that the crocodile smiled. It stood up a little taller, and took in a deep breath of pleasure. "You've been thinking, Cimba," it said approvingly.

"Not on purpose," I muttered. "Everything that is happening to the White Council now—the internal division, the warring, the loss, none of it's new, its it? It's all happened before," I looked around us, at the corpses. "Like a dress rehearsal. What was it all for? What is it all for, now?"

"Come away," the crocodile said again. "Lay on the table. I had my millstone, you have yours. No one ever said our burdens would be feather-weight. But if you don't agree to treatment or training, you will never be free of the monster that lurks within you. I'm offering you freedom. A new life. A gift of mercy."

"For a price," I said. "For a sacrifice."

"It's called cutting your losses," the crocodile said. "Adults do it every day."

"It's not that I'm against the table," I said. "It's the surgeon that I have issues with."

"The only others who know how to make the repairs are just like me. One of the forty-four. Or a few others, who are much, much worse from your point of view. I am your best option, child."

"Shan't," I said.

"That's why I approve of you," the crocodile raised its claws at me.

"Shan't," I said again, raising my own hands in unison with Nawang's. I said it with the strength of youth, but my words felt empty. This wasn't the real world. It wasn't even Nevernever. Magic didn't work here. Or did it?

I had made my escape hole using the same methods that I would use to make a tulpa. I had made it with my will.

Maybe that's how fights would work here. Whoever wants it badly enough wins.

The crocodile's eyes reflected nothing.

_Not just will_, I thought. _Deviousness wins_. The trouble was, Nawang had practiced at that for years upon years.

Our hands came to a stop.

Behind Nawang, I could make out the shadowy form of something moving in the altar room beyond, accompanied by a great cracking and grinding noise that sounded like a cross between an avalanche and a fevered glacier.

There was a hard _thunk_. Followed by another. And another.

The granite and iron altar appeared at the doorway, heaving slightly, dragging furrows into the wooden floor with its heavy feet.

I waggled my eyebrows at the crocodile. The altar was my contribution to the woman's dream. But Nawang didn't even look back at it. The crocodile instead waved its nose at me meaningfully, bidding me to look behind me, where all was dead silence.

I couldn't help it. I slowly turned my head and glanced back over my shoulder.

Directly behind me, sixty-four corpses of Tibetan men sat straight up, their faces in various states of destruction and decay, facing me directly. Their mouths were open in silent screams of terror and anger, cemented upon their last collective moment of surprise and betrayal. Slowly, they stood, and raised their arms towards me.

Sighing, I sank to the ground, crossing my legs, and began to empty my mind. The altar wormed its way through the door, thunking its feet on the ground with each awkward step it took, moving toward the crocodile, menacing it.

The sixty-four corpses began to shuffle towards me, moaning inhumanly.

_A shield_, I thought. _I need a shield, made of—out of what?_

_Of sound. A shield of sound._

_Not a shield. A lure. A bell, to call them. To call them to their next life, where they would find peace, or another chance at it._

I spread out my mind, reaching beyond the room, to the boundary of the dreamscape. I worked the fabric of the world, with its single element of thought, into the shape of a great copper bell with a wooden clapper. I gave it just a little tin to turn it to bronze. It was eight feet tall, and cylindrical, and I covered it with runes about the gods and the heavens and the fate of men.

And as the corpses neared me, I rang it. Once, twice, thrice.

They halted, mesmerized by the sound.

I ran it again, and again. The sound was soulful and melancholy. It spoke of lives unfulfilled, of plans unachieved, aspirations forgotten.

Even Nawang stopped for a moment. Even the altar.

The dream itself seemed to pause.

Nawang stiffened, shaking loose from the music's embrace.

He raised his crocodile claws. And changed the tune.

* * *

><p>I was falling.<p>

The temple was gone. I was surrounded by clouds, and the grey ground was beginning to clarify beneath my plummeting body. The air was freezing again, and wet.

Nawang was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he was everywhere, the new master of the dream. Maybe he was still in the temple.

I was falling, helpless. The wind burned me, in spite of the cold.

The ground grew larger. Bits of green and blue began to grow.

I closed my vainly watering eyes, and quieted my mind. The wind still whipped around me. I willed myself to fly.

I kept falling.

I willed harder. I felt the dream resist me, forcing me down. I passed a trio of condors, who were lazily circling, riding the thermals.

Thoughts about Nawang rolled through my head. How did he control dreams? What would happen if I hit the ground? What was he even trying to do? Kill me? Break my spirit so that I would give up and finally obey him?

The problem wasn't Nawang, though, was it? This wasn't his dream. No one had given him permission to change things.

_I change myself_, he had told me.

So that's what I did. I closed my eyes and let my mind float. I let the picture of the dream float with me. I let myself fall within it. My own meta-dream, in sync with the one that I was in.

And then, I changed my perspective. I told myself that down was another way, towards the horizon.

Maybe it was a kind of sympathy magic, like what I had done with my focusing rod and the lamp pole. Maybe it was a kind of tulpa magic. Maybe it was something self-inflicted.

I was changing _myself_. And in so doing, changing the world.

When I opened my eyes, I was flying. Soaring, like the condors.

It was brilliant and beautiful.

It didn't matter to me that the condors had turned to snakes and zipped through the air after me, or that the clouds turned into balls of fiery acid. I had the hang of it now.

I closed my eyes again, and changed the dream.

* * *

><p>An ancient man sat half-slumped in his wheelchair, surrounded by three middle-aged nurses dressed in hospital scrubs. A spotlight shone down on them, with empty black beyond the light. The black of fate. The black of impending death.<p>

The man in the wheelchair was Nawang, and he looked up at the nurses, unable to speak.

"You naughty man," one of the nurses said. "You forgot your medicine." She cooed over him with a fake air of affection.

"I—" Nawang managed.

"Go to sleep," another nurse said. "Your life is over, now. All that you were ever going to achieve has already been done."

"I never finished," he murmured.

"No," the second nurse agreed. "Did you really expect to? You set such high standards for yourself, didn't you? Could anyone have met them, do you think?"

"It wasn't for me," he gasped. "It was never for me. Please, help me. Let me live a little longer. I have to finish. Please."

"You failed," the third nurse said. "Let it go. Go to sleep."

Nawang closed his eyes. A rattling gasp issued from his windpipe.

It all changed.

* * *

><p>I was standing on the stage at the Coconut Grove Playhouse, a live audience filling the seats before me. White spotlights glared angrily at me, spraying me with thin fingers of intense heat.<p>

The audience was booing me loudly.

I couldn't believe it. I had never been jeered like that before. Never. I had always done such a good job. I had memorized my lines. I had studied the characters. Their little nuances. Their affectations. Their facial expressions.

But now they hated me. I was a failure. Completely and undividedly.

Behind me, Lady Macbeth took my arm into hers.

"They curse the ground you tread," she said.

"Why?" I begged her.

"Because you are wretched and contemptible in their eyes. They hate you because they can. Because you let them."

"I want them to stop. I just want to be loved."

"They _want_ to hate you. Look at them. That is the real world. It overflows with spite, and it has reserved the worst for you."

"I don't want to live in a world like that," I groaned.

She held a dagger out in front of me, the poniard pointed away from me. The blade towards my belly. "So," she said. "Don't."

I took the blade into my hands. It was warm, and seemed to throb and wriggle. The angry shouts from the audience drowned me with violent noise.

"The dagger?" I asked her.

"The dagger," she nodded. "There's no other way out. You cannot change the world. You can only change yourself."

The dagger.

I looked down at it, mesmerized by it.

The crowed only got louder. I would show them. I would show them what happens to hate. How it all ends. I would show them all, and they would finally understand, even if it was all too late for me.

I took a deep breath.

That's when I felt the sharp pain in my right arm.

Lady Macbeth was stabbing me with her own ladylike dagger in my arm, over and over. Her face had melted away, and was only a thing of fury.

"Stop!" I yelled at her. "Stop it! Stop it!"

The dream fell to pieces around me, shredded away into livid nothingness.

* * *

><p>I flicked my eyes open.<p>

I lay awkwardly on my back, grey stars in a grey sky floating above me. Gulls cried out in the distance.

I turned my head to my right. Jeeves was standing beside me, holding a bloody sewing needle in his tiny right hand. My right arm stung horribly.

"Little dude," I whispered.

Jeeves saluted me with his left hand.

My muscles rebelling, I pushed myself up to look back at the table where Nawang had been sitting when he knocked me out. The candle was still there, still lit, and still not budging in the wind. Behind the candle sat Nawang, his eyes closed, breathing evenly, his face gently glowing from the candle's faint light.

He took a long breath and opened his eyes, piercing me with his iron gaze.

"Who woke you?" he said woodenly, his eyes moving around the remnants of the yacht before they settled on Jeeves. "Who let you have _that?_" he grimaced involuntarily at my homunculus. "Do you have any notion what you've been walking around with?" He raised up his hand, aiming it squarely at Jeeves.

But I was young, and faster. I shot my arm up, yelling, "_Anil!_" Jeeves suddenly shot up into the air, tumbling away from me like a rag doll, and fell into the water over the port side of the boat.

"As you would have it," Nawang growled. "And now for you."

"Mano y Lama," I nodded.

He flicked his wrist disdainfully in my direction, the barest wiggle issuing from his index finger. Black tendrils popped out of his hand, just like the kind that the vampiress had shot at me. Faster than I could move, they closed the distance between us and crawled over my body like an infestation of cold hatred.

And like before, the runes Nawang had made me memorize weaved in multiple directions, like tumblers in a complex lock.

The black tendrils touched me. I could feel the dark magic within them, hungering for life, promising death. But they never entered me. It was like I had become a clown-fish, swimming impossibly through a bloodthirsty sea anemone. I was supposed to die, but instead my body had made itself at home.

Nawang dropped his hand, and the tendrils slipped away from me, slurped back into his fingers. "He's assimilated the runes so quickly," he whispered to himself. "It's as if he'd been prepared for them beforehand." He shook his head incredulously. "Who could achieve such a thing?"

"_Buddha's Nads,_" I snarled. "I hate being your specimen even more than being killed by you, you know that?"

"How little you understand," Nawang said. "You are a pawn. You have always been a pawn. Even before you met me, you were one. Who has been instructing you all this time, child?"

_Senge. And Father. And the Wardens. And Miami Senior High._ But I'm not their pawn. I'm their progeny. Right? There's a difference, isn't there?

He raised his hand again, high above his head. "_Dorje_," he intoned. He wasn't calling my name. He was calling my eponym.

I didn't have time to set up a proper Zen shield. And the thing was, out over the water I didn't have the power to make a very strong one, anyway. The hairs on my arms and legs stood up at attention, waving in the pre-morning wind.

There wasn't anything else to do. I jumped into the hole in the floor, landing badly on the VIP bed, tangling myself with large chunks of fiberglass. As I fell, I felt a flash of light and heat just behind me. A shockwave of sound concussed my skull, forcing a grunt of pain out of my body.

I looked up from the bed. Nawang was standing at the edge of the hole, staring passively down at me.

"Do it to me," I whispered to myself. "Go on, let your hair down, you big freak. I deserve it."

He called down another lightning bolt, right on top of me. This time, there was nowhere for me to run. I had to take it. Light boiled over me, ran ivy-like tendrils along my semi-scaly skin. The runes within me didn't protect me this time. I guess they weren't attuned to regular old mundane magic. The thing was, regular magic could blow you away just as fast as some exotic Outsider magic from another universe, or whatever it was.

I screamed in utter pain. When the spots cleared from my eyes, I found myself crawling helplessly through the smoking, half-melted wreckage of the boat debris. The mattress beneath me was on fire.

Another lightning bolt hit me. I would have screamed again, but I couldn't manage it. I blacked out instead.

A fourth lightning bolt woke me back up again. I was curled up in the fetal position, flames licking around me. My muscles were twitching spasmodically. My jaw was clenched shut, and I couldn't turn my lungs on to breathe.

I heard the muffled sounds of muttering above me, but couldn't make out what Nawang was saying. I slowly turned one eye up towards him. He was still standing at the hole's edge, his arms crossed and his expression unreadable. He balled up his hands into fists and touched them together. At the moment that they touched, the fiery mattress lifted up into the air, carrying me and the semi-solid bits of boat up with it. The mattress rose up past the top of the hole and flipped to one side, dumping me and the boat junk unceremoniously to the deck, littered in a loose pile.

I slowly raised my hand, aiming it at Nawang. "_Nyima_," I croaked hoarsely. A feeble jet of fire leapt out of my hand, covering barely half the distance between me and Nawang before it petered out. I dropped my hand to the ground with a thunk.

Nawang cracked his knuckles and whispered something more. The deck around me began to half-melt, half crack open noisily. The warped pieces of yacht twisted and wrapped themselves around my arms, legs, and neck, holding me down tightly. The loose bits of fiberglass melted into my shackles, strengthening them.

Nawang took out a white handkerchief and mopped his forehead. He looked around for a moment, and then stepped over to one of the black bags left behind by Marcone's mercs. He rifled though it until he found a bayonet, grunting to himself as he turned it back and forth in his hand, testing out its feel.

Giving it a final shake, he stood up and stepped over to my side.

"It has to be this way," he said. "I cannot allow my creations to run free."

"Because I might turn on you," I barely managed.

"Because you _will_ turn on me," he agreed.

"You're right," I said. "I don't regret turning on you. I just regret that I could never get the hang of an AK-47. It would have been so much easier."

"Goodbye, then," he said.

"Not with magic?" I asked, looking at the bayonet meaningfully.

He simply looked down at me silently.

"Because you're out," I said, almost smiling. "What a shame."

Nawang lifted the bayonet high above his head in both hands, the blade pointed downwards at my heart. The first glimmers of sunlight glinted off it, making it seem to glow a little of its own accord. The ocean waves below seemed to swell up, lifting the boat higher.

And behind Nawang came the soft crunching of fiberglass bits beneath small bare feet. The ocean seemed to rise again, more strongly this time. The sound of waves breaking against the hull of the boat rolled around us.

A feeling blanketed me. A feeling of—well, not of lust. Not of desire, or hunger. It was simply a feeling of love. Of the knowledge that comes that no matter what happens in the world, that there exists somewhere a person who gives an actual damn.

Nawang held the bayonet above me, almost motionless.

I saw a woman's hand come up from behind his left shoulder, touching it. And then his right. Nawang closed his eyes and shuddered.

"I'm here," Ava's voice carried from behind Nawang. She was standing right behind him now, her naked body pressed against his. But it wasn't a dirty kind of naked. It was the nakedness of nature. The nakedness of vulnerability. The nakedness of simple, unconcealed love. "I trust you," she whispered.

I closed my eyes and shook from her power. Steel clattered at my side.

"I feel your loneliness," she whispered in his ear from behind, her hands moving gently across his chest. I just stared at her dumbly, captured by her. Her words were for him, but my brain reacted as if they had been for me. I loved her. I had always loved her. And I always would.

Nawang let out a sob.

"Tell me about her," she stepped around his side, looking into his eyes.

He shook his head. "What does it matter, now? She is lost. May the gods forgive me. I've lost her."

"She is still within you," Ava put her hand up to Nawang's chin and guided his eyes into hers. "You are what you are because of her."

"No!" he cried out. "Accuse me of anything, but not of that."

"How did you lose her?" Ava caressed him.

Nawang sobbed again. His eyes stared out into space, hypnotized. "She was killed in prison…the Chinese…while I hid…"

"And there were children, too, weren't there? Her children. Your children."

He gritted his teeth, lost in his worst memories. Reliving them for Ava. My body rattled spasmodically from the power of her presence, chafing roughly against my shackles. "As soon as the surrender agreement was signed, I packed them up to flee the country with a friend's family. I knew there wasn't much time before the Chinese cleaned house. I had to protect them." He turned his eyes to look at her. "But I don't know what happened to them. They never made it to the border. I looked and looked, but—they were gone, just vanished from the earth. I used magic, summoned demons, made terrifying agreements. But it was for nothing. For nothing."

"You went for help from the Spiral," Ava said.

"They told me to be patient. To be _patient_. But I wasn't alone. There were so many of us, so much fear, so much desire to fight back."

"She offered the dark path," Ava whispered.

He squeezed his eyes shut. "She promised that I would find them. That I would avenge them," he groaned. "It was all lies. I sat at her feet, her pupil. But she lied. It was her finest, hardest lesson to me. How I hated her! How I needed to believe her!"

"Tomorrow you can look again," she whispered lovingly. "But for now, you want to sleep. Sleep, my darling."

And he did. His body slowly slumped to the ground, still held in her gentle arms.

She turned her naked body towards me, knelt down to get close to me. Sunlight glistened in her hair, outlined her perfect shape.

My plan had worked. I had never intended to beat him one on one, if it came to fighting with him. It would take a lifetime for me to become powerful enough to try. I just had to wear him down, distract him from the real attack, the one he couldn't fight. Ava—her love, and her unconditional and genuine understanding. A man like Nawang had no defense against that.

"Free me," I croaked. "I need to kill him."

She shook her head.

My mouth opened, but nothing came out for a moment. "But your husband. He murdered him. Indirectly," I added lamely.

"I know," she said. "But you don't understand the fey, or at least my kind of fey. What's done is done. I want Kalden to live, to face his life. It's my choice. My instinct."

"And Calvin? Who speaks for him?"

"He speaks for himself, from where he has gone to. You will see."

"I don't understand—"

"You will, when the sun is high. For now, you are exhausted from your fight. You need to sleep, my love."

I fought, but I didn't have it in me. She was right, I had abused my body horribly in the struggle with Nawang. Severe, bubbly burns from the lightning bolts ran up and down my skin. "He might wake up. I have to protect you," I whispered.

She smiled that smile, and my heart melted.

I slept.

The truth is, I had no more defense against her than Nawang did.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty-One**

I woke up with the midmorning sun burning my eyes, and a headache that made me want to whimper. This pain thing was getting to be a nasty habit. The deck of the yacht rolled gently beneath me.

"Fair morning, George," a voice said to me.

It was Angel.

"Thought you went to Chicago," I forced my swollen jaw to open and let words out.

"I did. Came back behind the hit crew. But some asshole beat us to the target."

I grunted. "Didn't kill him," I said.

"Come on, get up," Angel said. "You don't want to miss this."

"Miss what? I'm very happy where I am, thank you," I said without moving.

"You get to see what Marcone has in store for Nawang," he answered.

I pictured a bullet in the back of a bald head. "Uh, maybe not," I said.

"Up to you," Angel shrugged.

"Anyway, he's not Marcone's prisoner. He's Ava's."

"That's not the way Marcone is playing it. Who's Ava?"

I looked up at Angel. "The one who captured him."

Angel shook his head. "It was just you and Nawang on the boat, kid. You were both knocked out cold. We just helped ourselves to the pickings."

"So he's my prisoner, you're saying. Your boss is dicking around with my prisoner."

"No offense, kid, but you're a mess, and Nawang wasn't. He was asleep and we took him. Somehow, I'm not seeing you as his captor. And even if you were, kid, I don't think you could handle him."

I sat up stiffly, my head spinning around wildly. I turned to one side and threw up some bile. The makeshift shackles of fiberglass and teak were open, although they were still curled slightly around my limbs. The sunrise had destroyed the spell.

"You need a doctor, kid," Angel offered.

"I know." I grabbed Angel's outstretched hand and slowly pulled my wrecked body up. "Oh, holy scones," I whined.

In the bright sunlight, I got a much better view of the state of the yacht. It looked the way I felt. We were standing in what used to be the salon, only the roof had been blown away, leaving the cloudless sky above us. The wall separating the salon from the galley was obliterated, giving me an intimate view of the small cooking area. Glass, slivers of wood, and bits of boat were just everywhere. Dots of black blood and congealed ectoplasm from the demon were splattered liberally over everything. The yacht was totaled.

I had just never seen anything like it on a watercraft.

Just, wow.

Angel led the way around the right side of the galley, through a narrow hallway that led to the owner's cabin in the forward section of the yacht. It had survived the blast. I walked into the room a few steps behind Angel.

The queen-sized bed that normally would have occupied the center of the room was gone, removed. In its place stood the awkwardly repaired dining room table, its center leaf set aside to make the table smaller. A trio of candles sat on the table, their flames bobbing and dancing. There was also an empty chair behind the table, facing the center of the room. In another chair, to the left side of the table, sat Marcone, his legs crossed, a smoldering cigar balanced between the fingers of his left hand while his elbow rested comfortably on the table's edge. He was casually observing a pair of men in the other side of the room.

One of the men was Nawang. He was on his knees. His hands were tied behind his back, and he had a gag held in place by a bridle of rope. His head was bowed. He was silent, and his eyes seemed far away.

Behind him stood a tall man wearing a thick blackish leather duster and heavy black boots. He was so tall that he had to bend his head down slightly to account for the room's low ceiling. And he was holding a double-edged straight-sword in his hand, the blade of which was resting gently on Nawang's right shoulder blade, where the prisoner could see the sharp tip as a constant reminder of his status in life.

_What kind of idiot wears a leather duster in Miami?_ I thought.

And then my brain caught up with me, and I thought, _Oh, crap, that's a Warden._

He turned his head and saw me, giving me the once-over. But he just grunted and shook his head, dismissing me as quickly as he noticed me.

If I weren't so damned afraid of them, I'd almost choose to be offended. But the smart part of me decided to just be grateful, instead. For the moment. Because now I really needed to get off the boat. I wished that Angel had been a little more specific about who was in the room before he lured me in. Holy Scones.

The shadows of movement drew my attention to the doorway behind me. I looked back, and saw a thirty-five year-old woman walking briskly into the room. She had paper-white skin and long, straight black hair that went to the bottom of her shoulder blades. She was wearing an expensive dark blue business suit with medium length black heels. In her left hand was a slim executive briefcase. She wore dark glasses. Designer. Black as midnight. They looked opaque to me.

She brushed by me, evidently already certain of where she was going. She headed straight for the empty chair behind the table, but didn't sit down in it. She lay the briefcase in the center of the desk and looked around the room, taking us all in.

"Gentlemen," she said.

Marcone casually put out his cigar on the table, but he didn't extend his hand to her. He shifted his attention to Nawang, measuring him.

"I take it this is the subject?" she asked, nodding her head in Nawang's direction.

Nawang lifted his head, furrowed his brows at her.

She turned her head to Marcone. "The chair, sir?"

"Of course," Marcone stood up, grabbed the chair that he had been sitting in by the top of its back, and turned it to face the table in front of the woman. He nodded at the man holding the sword.

"Sit," the Warden said to Nawang.

Nawang made a noise through his gag.

"You may ungag and release him, now," the woman said.

The man with the sword whispered something. The ropes that had bound Nawang unraveled on their own and fell to the carpet. The gag followed with a soft plop.

"You were saying?" the man bent closer to Nawang.

"I shall not cooperate," Nawang said in a monotone.

The man in the duster bent even closer to Nawang and whispered something into his ear. Nawang seemed to sigh, but he got up and sat in the chair, his shoulders slightly slumped, his head lowered again.

"Kalden Nawang?" the woman said, facing him. "It is my pleasure to be doing business with you, today. Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Chandra Seovic." She sat down in her chair and straightened the tight-fitting skirt of her suit. She took off her sunglasses and laid them down on the table next to her closed briefcase.

That's when I looked at her eyes.

Chandra Seovic had no irises.

_Buddha's piss._ Just the whites, and pinprick pupils. Just like a praying mantis. Just like Bouknight's.

Oh, gods below.

"Shall we begin?" she said lightly, with the hint of a smile.

Nawang raised his head and saw.

They say that people could hear his screams as far as a mile away.

* * *

><p>I sat at the bow of the yacht, the midmorning wind blowing hotly across my scalp. The sound of the waves and distant gulls wound around me. But I still shivered, my soul alone and frozen. Nothing had happened the way I had imagined it would. Hell, what I really imagined was that I would be found dead by Marcone's crew. Everything else was out of my reckoning. I had gone through and out the other side, only to realize that the other side was empty wilderness, sans landmarks, sans road signs.<p>

Boots crunched along the debris, ambling toward my sanctuary. The Warden with the duster calmly walked along the outer deck until he reached the bow, stopping when he saw me. He tossed his sword to one side and sat down near me, contemplating the surf. As he settled in, his duster opened up, revealing a grungy black tee shirt that read, "ASK ME ABOUT MY CRYSTAL BALLS." We spent the next few moments reading each other's shirt, surreptitiously sizing each other up.

"I don't get it," I spoke after I realized that he wasn't planning on going first.

"What's that? The crystal balls?" he pulled a toothpick out from some pocket and picked at his teeth with it.

"No, I _get_ that. What's a Warden doing handing over a guy like Nawang to a guy like Marcone?"

He looked over at me. "Funny you should ask," he said, flicking the toothpick to one side. "Marcone told me a lot about you. Angel filled in the rest of the details. For what it's worth, I remember your parents a little. I saw them in Edinburgh once."

"So? What's who I am got to do with Nawang?"

"It's simple math," he threw a piece of loose fiberglass into the water. "I didn't turn Kalden Nawang in to the Council because then I'd have to turn in Dorje Saga."

We sat in silence for a while, while I worked on that.

"I have traded a death for a life," he added helpfully.

I shifted around unhappily. "I hope you didn't get a raw deal in that."

"Your job is to make sure I didn't."

He extended a large hand toward me. "Dresden. My friends call me Harry."

I shook his hand, not knowing what else to do.

"But Nawang? Working for Marcone?" I shook my head incredulously.

Dresden shrugged. "I arranged it so that Nawang is forbidden in his Contract from using any kind of magic, or from teaching it. He can give advice about Nevernever. That's about it. It's still a plus for Marcone, and it puts a leash on Nawang, which is all Marcone really wanted in the first place. With a little luck, it'll work out."

"You take some crazy risks, Mister," I said. "So, you work for Marcone?"

He lowered he voice to a deep growl. "I do _not_ work for Marcone. Sometimes we do things together, if it suits us. But that's all. Someday—someday, I'll take him down for the murdering thug he is."

"Everyone works for Marcone, eventually. That's what everyone tells me. He's one of the predators. And the sheep always go to work for the predators."

"You shouldn't listen to people," Dresden looked out at the water.

"Think of all those regular guys out there," I said, waving my hand towards the shore, towards the waves of ordinary human beings back in Miami and beyond, leading their ordinary lives. "How is it that they can live in such peace, while I am drawn into so much violence? All I ever wanted was to be like anyone else on my block."

"I'm not going to agree with you that those people are sheep, George," Dresden sat back, his hands clasped behind his head. "They aren't. The world only looks peaceful from outer space. When you get up close, you see the scar tissue. It's old, and it runs deep. The difference between you and those people is only a matter of degree, the fact that you were given sharper teeth. And that means that when a predator bites at you, it's going to be in your nature to bite back. You can't help it, George, any more than your parents could. And neither can I."

"But that means that I'm going to spend the rest of my life biting and biting and biting."

"Yeah, I guess so. You can't always pick your enemies, George, not unless you want to be a predator yourself."

"Can't you?" I asked. "I chose not to be enemies with the Red Court."

"And you may eventually pay for that. The war with the Red Court is raging harder than ever, and now the word is spreading around that you're a wizard. If the Red Court runs into you, they will see you as a legitimate target. They'll attack you, or worse, they may get clever and try to use you against the rest of us. And when that happens—whether you like it or not—you are going to be very alone, and very vulnerable."

Dresden didn't know that I had already run into the Red Court, or what had happened. I wasn't going to tell him, either. It was none of his business. It wasn't that he was totally wrong. He was right about how the Red Court would react to me. The next time I met them, there may not be a double-dealing vampiress to stay them from killing me. But that wasn't the point. The point was, I wasn't going to meet them. I was going to stay they hell away from them. Far, far away.

I crossed my arms. "When that day comes, I'll face it. But I am not going to make it come faster by running to the Council for protection at the first sign of trouble."

The wizard sighed. "So be it. For what it's worth, I understand. Up to a point."

Dresden reached into his leather overcoat and pulled a business card out of an inside pocket. He handed it to me.

_HARRY DRESDEN—WIZARD_

_Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations._

_Office: XXXXXXX  
><em>

Home: 312-958-0877

"When the war is over, and you are ready to be something more than an apprentice, give me a call," he simply said.

"Like a paranormal investigator? Gee, that's great," I pushed the card into my pocket. It bent in half on the way in, and I didn't care.

"Like a Warden," he looked out at the shimmering water.

"And that's your big motivational speech? I got better from the Onyx Lama. Come to think of it, I got better from Marcone. Ever since I dodged the draft, I've been stepping on eggshells around the White Council. I'm fed up with it."

He shrugged, unimpressed. "Hey, I walked around with the Doom of Damocles over my head for years. If you don't trust the White Council, I'd be the first person not to blame you. But dammit, they're still family. They're still worth fighting for."

I sat in silence for a while. "Yeah, well, I don't see it."

"Let me put it this way. You've gone up against a demon. You've seen the monsters that stalk the night. And then you've seen a dark wizard at work. You've seen with your own eyes that a dark wizard puts all the demons and monsters to shame when he's on his game.

"I'll tell you this—without the White Council, the wizards of the world would _all_ be like Nawang. It would be a very scary world, I can promise you. The White Council is where we all come together to agree to be something better than the hellish thugs that we secretly want to be. And while in reality the Council might suck, the idea that created it is still worth a shot."

He got up and picked up his sword from its resting place.

"Give it a thought," he said. "I don't ask for anything else."

I did.


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

My sailboat lay moored out in the sheltered water by the Club, untouched—or at least unscarred—by the events of the last few days. Stanley motored me over to it from the shore. The late afternoon sun was lazily rolling down the sky to its resting place.

"What happened to the sword thingie?" Stanley asked me casually, looking up and down my body at my burns and bruises.

I shrugged. "What sword?" I said.

"Suit yerself," he said. "No ailment you got that a steady job wouldn't cure."

"What are you, my mother?" I asked.

"Just sayin'."

I tossed my bag up over into the cockpit and leapt out of the skiff to clamber up the ladder, realizing that I wouldn't find Jeeves waiting for me on board. I missed the little dude already. But he wasn't in any real danger in the water, other than his clothes getting ruined by the salt water. I'd see him again, eventually. I heard the skiff puttering away behind me.

And then I came to a screeching halt.

There were two people sitting in the cockpit, waiting for me.

One of those people was Ava.

The other was Calvin. He was wearing dark glasses, a tan swim suit, and flip-flops. Like nothing had changed. Well, except they were my clothes. He must have nicked them from my cabin.

When I looked at him, I felt a sudden irrational urge to deck him. Which made no sense to me at all, because I was supposed to be overjoyed that he was alive. The wrongness of my own feelings made me do a double-take.

And then I saw the brown grocery bag lying at his feet, matching Ava's.

"Oh, Calvin," I moaned, suddenly sitting down on the opposite side of the cockpit. "Oh, dude. I'm so sorry about everything."

"No sweat, man. I wanted you to know that. Well, really Ava wanted you to know that, but I'm cool, really."

I couldn't help but stare at Calvin's bag.

"Why, Calvin? Why—this?"

He shrugged. "It's hard to explain. The Rapture was boring, man, so I came back." He leaned back against the cockpit seat, his hands folded behind his head. And broke out into a soft smile.

Ava shook her head. "You shouldn't joke about such things," she said. "The fact is, it's a mystery why we come back. None of us know. Wait, George, I have something for you." She opened up an equipment box near her feet and pulled out a sword. My father's sword. The blade was clean. Maybe the ocean water had dissolved Omwor-ust's blood.

"I saw it on the bottom beneath the boat," she explained.

"Thank you," I said taking it gently. "You have no idea how much this means to me."

"I found your homunculus, too. He's down below, drying off."

"I got the demon who drowned you," I offered to Calvin.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "I think—I don't remember much about it, but I think I saw it on my way back. It was really, really pissed."

A wry grin crept across my face.

"So, are you guys going to hang out around here, now?" I asked Ava.

But she shook her head.

"The ocean's too warm here for us," Calvin said. "Not a natural habitat. Plus the water tastes like total sewage."

"We're still going to try to get back to Scotland," Ava said.

"Yeah? You ever make a plan on how to get there?"

Calvin shrugged. "Gotta get money. Get her a fake passport or something. All that stuff. May take some work."

"There's something else, George," Ava said. "Once we're gone, you can't see us for another seven years. I don't know why that is, but it's just one of the rules."

I smiled again. "I've never been big on taking the rules seriously."

She held her hand out to me, and I took it. There was no rush of testosterone. Just a warm hand, holding mine. I'd miss her.

Okay, maybe a little testosterone. It goes with the territory.

"Good luck," she said.

"Hang on," I muttered. "I think I have an idea. I might be able to arrange a ride for you guys."

I sat back and drummed my fingers in thought.

* * *

><p>A cell phone jammed to my ear, I ambled around the parking lot of the sailing club, pacing in long circles. Dresden's wadded up business card was in my hand.<p>

I was expecting an answering machine to pick up, but a man's voice carried over the line. "Hello?" he said. It was Dresden. Just an hour before, he was still with me on the carcass of the yacht, offering Marcone some final tips on the care and feeding of a subjugated wizard. Now he was home, in Chicago. _Holy Scones_, I thought, _this dude knows how to travel around_.

"Dresden?" I said. "This is George, the guy you met on the boat today."

"Yeah? I wasn't expecting your call for a couple of years."

"It's not that call," I said. "I wanted to ask you for a small favor."

"George," he said, a little coldly, "you have no clue what happened to me the last time I did someone a _small favor_. Is there any way you could have phrased that differently?"

"No, it really is," I said.

"Yeah, right."

"Look, all it is, is there's a couple of selkies trapped here in Miami, and I was hoping that you could escort them back to Edinburgh. After that, they can do the rest."

"Selkies?" Dresden asked. "What's selkies doing in Miami?"

So I told him about Ava and how it all started. He laughed so hard he hexed his own phone.

"I'll put that down as a _yes_," I told myself.


End file.
